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SAN FRANCISCO 
AND THEREABOUT 

By CHARLES KEELER 




SAN FRANCISCO 

THE CALIFORNIA PROMOTION COMMITTEE 
1903 






Copyright 1902 

By The California Promotion Committee 

of San Francisco 



Tenth Thousand 



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PRINTED BY 

THE STANLEY-TAYLOR COMPANY 

SAN FRANCrSCO 



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SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT 



PREFACE 

There is a real need at the present day of a book on 
San Francisco which shall be simple and direct, giving 
a brief history of the city's romantic past and a just 
description of its present life, with the picturesque 
setting of bay and hills. It is needed not merely to 
introduce people at a distance to the American metrop- 
olis of the Pacific, but also that the younger gene- 
ration of native sons and daughters may not forget the 
exciting scenes which have been enacted here, and that 
they may be reminded of the enlarged life in which 
they are called to participate. In undertaking these 
brief essays I have tried to give a true picture of the 
city so far as the limited scope of the book permitted. 
In writing the historical chapters, condensed to 
a few telling episodes of the stirring life of a century 
and a quarter, I have consulted the voluminous Annals 
of San Francisco by Soule, Gihon and Nisbet, Theo- 
dore H. Hitteirs History of California, John S. Hit- 
tell's History of San Francisco, Lights and Shades in 
San Francisco by B. E. Lloyd, Bayard Taylor's El 
Dorado, Dana's Two Years Before the Mast, and many 
other books and pamphlets. The descriptive chap- 
ters are chiefly the result of personal observation dur- 
ing the past fifteen years, supplemented by such 
pamphlets as the Reports of the Chamber of Com- 
merce of San Francisco and other papers and articles 
bearing on the subjects discussed. If this little book 
succeeds in stimulating a few residents to read more 
deeply of the city's past, and to continue with increasing 
zeal the work of its future upbuilding, or if it awakens 
in some of our Eastern friends the migratory impulse 
which impels them to follow Horace Greeley's advice 
to go West, it will have accomplished its mission. 

C.K. 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



Discovery of San Francisco Bay . faces 

Mission Dolores " 

San Francisco from the Bay . . " 
Looking Down Market Street . . " 
Looking Up Montgomery Street from 

Market 

Looking Down Kearny Street to Market " 
A Van Ness Avenue Residence . . " 

The City Hall " 

Trinity Church " 

Along the Waterfront . . . . " 
An Alley in Chinatown ..." 
On a Restaurant Balcony ..." 
Quaint Japanese Garden ..." 
On the Rim of the Golden Gate . . " 
A Glimpse of the Business Section . " 
On Campus of University of California " 
Burlingame Country Club . . " 
Inner Quadrangle of Stanford University " 
Mount Tamalpais . . . . " 
Passage Between Two Hemispheres . " 
Map of San Francisco and Thereabout at end of 



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CONTENTS 



The Padres of Saint Francis i 

The Coming of the Argonauts .... 9 

The Railroad and Bonanza Kings ... 22 

The Peerless Bay 26 

Vignettes of City Streets 34 

Highways and Byways 44 

The Barbary Coast 54 

A Corner of Cathay 58 

Pleasure Grounds by the Sea 70 

The Awakening of the City .... 73 

The Eastern Shore 82 

South of San Francisco 86 

About Mount Tamalpais 89 

Through the Golden Gate 92 



THE PADRES OF SAINT FRANCIS 




N these days of steam and electricity, 
when news is thrilling back and forth 
over the wire nerves of the land, and 
trains are coursing like arterial blood 
from shore to shore, it is hard to real- 
ize that in the memorable year of 
1776, while our own ancestors were 
making the immortal declaration which gave birth 
to the American nation, the Spanish padres, knowing 
nothing of the momentous conflict across the land, 
fraught with such deep meaning both for America and 
Spain, were establishing the humble mission of San 
Francisco for the conversion of a few Indian souls. To 
understand the motives which inspired the little band 
of zealots in wandering thus to the outer rim of the 
western world, and to learn their means of establishing 
themselves there, a swift backward glance is necessary. 
During those far away times when Protestant 
Elizabeth jealously watched the doings of Catholic 
Philip, a lonely galleon sailed once a year across the 
waste of the Pacific from the Philippine Islands to the 
Mexican port of Acapulco. It was laden with spice 
and the treasure of the Orient destined for Seville. Eng- 
lish buccaneers lurked in the bays of the west coast of 
the Americas waiting to plunder the treasure ship, 
or, failing in capturing this prize, to loot the Spanish 
towns of Central and South America. Foremost of 
these daring pirates was Francis Drake, who followed 
up the coast of North America and passed San 
Francisco Harbor without discovering it. It was in 
the year 1579 that he landed in the bay which today 
bears his name and took possession of the territory, 



2 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT 

calling it New Albion, and holding there, before a 
wondering band of Indians, the first Protestant service 
on the Pacific shore. A stone cross has recently been 
erected in Golden Gate Park to commemorate this 
event. 

Even before this time, California had been named 
and its coast superficially inspected by the Spaniards. 
Cortez and the explorers in his service had sailed about 
the end of Lower California, which they supposed to 
be an island. They had read the popular romance, 
Sergas of Esplandian, wherein is described a fabulous 
race of Amazons, decked in armor and precious gems, 
who lived on an island to the right of the Indies, and 
half hoping no doubt to prove the fiction real, had 
called their discovery after the mythical land of the 
Amazons, California.* Barren and unpromising the 
region proved to be. Cabrillo in 1542 sailed along the 
coast and in 1603 Vizcaino explored it, mapping the 
bays of San Diego and Monterey, but adding little else 
of value to the knowledge of the region. He noted, 
however, that as he proceeded northward, the country 
became greener and more inviting in appearance. 

Not until the year 1768 was there any serious 
thought of settling the region which today is known 
as California. Baja or Lower California was occupied 
by Jesuits until the hostility of the government drove 
them from the land. Their missions were taken by 
the Dominicans and the way was at last open for the 
Franciscans to undertake the settlement of the prac- 
tically unknown wilderness of Alta or Upper Cal- 
ifornia. Junipero Serra, a fervid enthusiast, was 
chosen as leader of the movement, and he lost no time 
in setting out, with three little vessels and Uvo land 
parties, for San Diego, where he proposed to locate 
the first of the new establishments. According to the 
plan of the governor-general, Galvez, three missions 



*An attempt has been made to find the derivation of CaHfomia in two 
Spanish words, caliente fornalla, a hot furnace, but this origin is generally 
discredited. 



THE PADRES OF SAINT FRANCIS 3 

were to be founded, at San Diego, Monterey and at a 
point midway between the two, to be called San Buena- 
ventura. When the devoted Junipero Serra heard this, 
he asked if Saint Francis, the founder of their order, 
was to have no mission dedicated to him. Galvez 
answered discreetly that if Saint Francis wished a 
mission he could show them the port where it was to 
be located. 

Shortly after reaching San Diego, despite the 
exhausted condition of many of the party, despite the 
numerous deaths from scurvey of those who had come 
by sea, and the loss of one ship with all on board, de- 
spite the hostility of the Indians and the uncertainty of 
the way, a detachment was sent forward to find the bay 
of Monterey, known only from the rude chart of 
Vizcaino, and to locate there the second mission. It 
was this party that missed their objective point and 
discovered instead one of the world's most wonderful 
harbors, a hundred miles and more beyond. 

The party, commanded by Governor Portala, 
included Captain Moncade, Lieutenant Fages, En- 
gineer Costanso, Sergeant Ortega and two priests. 
Padre Crespi and Padre Gomez, together with thirty- 
five soldiers, a number of muleteers and some Mission 
Indians from Baja California. Can we not conjure 
up a picture of them as they climbed the sage-brush 
mountains, forded the rivers and looked on the beauty 
of the live-oak glades, or penetrated the mysterious 
solitudes of the redwood forests? There were the two 
friars in their coarse gray cowled robes. Governor 
Portala and his officers in gay costumes, with short 
velvet jackets and wide slashed breeches trimmed with 
gold lace, bright sashes and plumed hats; the soldiers 
with loose leather coats hanging to their knees, and 
leather breeches; the muleteers in scrapes and som- 
breros, and the scantily clad Indian followers. Afflicted 
with scurvey, many of the party had to be carried on 
litters by their able-bodied fellows. Still they pressed 
on, they knew not why nor whither. On November 



4 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT 

first, discouraged and exhausted, they climbed the 
heights near the ocean and saw the wide coast bight 
formed by Point Reyes to the northward and sheltered 
by the Farallones de los Freyres, a group of rocky islets 
off shore. Most of the party were satisfied that they 
had overshot their mark, but as some uncertainty still 
existed. Sergeant Ortega was sent forward with a party 
to explore. Some of the soldiers left behind in camp 
went hunting in the hills to the eastward, and on re- 
turning told their companions of a great arm of the 
ocean which they had seen to the north of them. When 
the explorers came back they reported that Indians, met 
on the way, told them of a harbor two days' journey 
ahead, where a ship lay at anchor. With renewed 
hopes of finding Monterey, Portala pressed forward 
with his flagging band. After traveling well to the 
north he climbed the hills in an easterly direction and 
from their crest looked down upon the splendid reaches 
of San Francisco Bay. What thought he as he scanned 
that vision of land-locked tide — of misty miles of hill- 
encircled bay with silver bars of sunlight flung across 
the gray-blue expanse from the cloudy sky? Not of 
marts and emporiums for the commerce of the world 
was his vision, but simply of a new site for a mission 
and a new center for spreading the gospel and main- 
taining the prestige of the King of Spain. 

He found that the report of a ship was false and 
that in truth he was looking upon a hitherto unknown 
country. Accordingly, after a few days of further 
exploration along the hill crests in view of the splendid 
bay, the party retraced their weary way to San Diego, 
there to report the failure of the expedition. When 
Father Serra learned of the discovery of this wonderful 
bay, he recalled the words of Galvez and was con- 
vinced that the explorers had been miraculously led 
by Saint Francis to the spot where he wished his 
mission to be established. Some six years intervened 
before this could be accomplished although the devoted 
leader never lost sight of it as the objective point in 



THE PADRES OF SAINT FRANCIS 5 

his work. Meanwhile Monterey was re- discovered 
and settled, and after it San Antonio, San Gabriel, San 
Luis Obispo and San Juan Capistrano. 

Three years after the first expedition in search of 
Monterey, Father Serra persuaded Lieutenant Pages 
to further explore the Bay of San Francisco with a view 
to locating a mission. A third party continued this 
work in the fall of 1774, and at Point Lobos on a hill 
overlooking the Golden Gate and the Seal Rocks, set 
up a cross to commemorate their work. The next 
year, when the San Carlos sailed into Monterey Bay 
with supplies for the mission, it brought the welcome 
news that orders had been given to send a party of 
settlers from Mexico to establish the new presidio of 
San Prancisco. Ayala, the commander of the little 
vessel, had also been instructed to make a survey of 
the harbor by boat, which he at once proceeded to 
undertake. On the fifth day of August, 1775, he sailed 
through the strait and anchored in the bay of San 
Prancisco, the first navigator to penetrate to its majestic 
waters. He selected an island for his headquarters, 
naming it in the deliberate Spanish fashion, Nuestra 
Senora de los Angeles, tfie same that has since been 
curtailed and Anglicized into Angel Island. Prom 
this rendezvous the bay was explored in small boats 
as far as the mouth of the Sacramento River. 

The first party of emigrants for San Prancisco 
started at about this time from Sinaloa and Sonora in 
Mexico on the long and weary march over a region 
without roads. Two hundred strong they set forth — 
soldiers and settlers with their wives and children, 
driving herds of cattle before them. At San Gabriel 
and again at Monterey they had long, vexatious delays. 
Pinally a small advance guard pushed on to their 
destination and selected the spot now known as Port 
Point for the presidio or fort. Por a mission they chose 
a more sheltered valley some two or three miles re- 
moved and midway betwixt ocean and bay. Not until 
June, 1776, did the main party, much depleted in 



6 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT 

numbers, finally leave Monterey for San Francisco. 
Two missionaries, Francisco Palou and Pedro Benito 
Cambon accompanied them. Under the leadership of 
Jose Moraga they set forth — a sergeant, two corporals, 
sixteen soldiers, seven pobladores or settlers, muleteers, 
vaqueros, servants and Indians, together with their 
wives and children. Many of them were mounted, 
while a pack train and a herd of about three hundred 
cattle were driven before them. Shortly after their 
departure, the San Carlos sailed with a load of freight 
for the settlers. Father Serra took leave of the emi- 
grants and bade them God speed, loath to see them go 
without him. 

A ten days' march brought the party to the San 
Francisco peninsula, where, near the present site of 
Dolores Mission they set up their tents. Their first task 
was to erect a rude hut to serve as chapel, where the 
mass could be celebrated. They then made further 
inspection of the country, and, ere long, leaving the 
missionaries with a few soldiers and the cattle, moved 
out upon the hills flanking the Golden Gate, where 
they set about building rude temporary dwellings and 
a chapel which they deemed of more immediate im- 
portance than a fort. 

When the San Carlos, after much delay by head 
winds, lagged into port, the presidio was more care- 
fully planned in the usual Spanish style, with a plaza 
in the center. The carpenters were assisted by the 
sailors, and ere long the combined force had contrived 
to build a cluster of low houses of poles coated with 
mud and roofed with tule thatch. After lending a 
hand at this enterprise, the willing sailors gave their 
services to the friars at the mission station, and put up 
a small church and house adjoining it. Thus was built 
the first settlement of San Francisco! 

On September the seventeenth of this same mem- 
orable year, 1776, the first celebration was held, the 
ceremony of taking formal possession of the presidio 
for King Charles III. Imagine that picturesque 
gathering by the Golden Gate! Comandante Moraga 



THE PADRES OF SAINT FRANCIS 7 

in all the splendor of a Spanish officer's costume; 
Commander Quiros of the San Carlos, also gaily 
attired; the tonsured Gray Friars; the soldiers, sailors, 
settlers and servants, all decked in festal garb! The 
mission bells were rung; the two clumsy cannon were 
fired; there were volleys of musketry and singing of 
hymns. The royal standard floated in the fresh breeze 
sweeping in from the sea. A cross was reared and a 
high mass celebrated. Following this came the bar- 
becue with an abundance of joints of roasted steer, 
tortillas and frijoles seasoned with red peppers, and 
no doubt some good Spanish wine to wash them down. 
San Francisco had been founded to extend the domin- 
ion of the king of Spain, and the spiritual influence of 
Saint Francis. 

Early in October followed a second celebration 
to mark the founding of the mission, San Francisco 
de Assisi. Padre Palou officiated, while the same 
little band of officers, soldiers, and sailors took part in 
the solemnity. Work was forthwith commenced on 
the church, but the task of making Indian converts 
was beset with unusual difficulties. The Padres must 
have been reminded of the old receipt for cooking a 
hare, which runs : First catch your hare, etc. 

A fight between two tribes had left the country 
practically depopulated, the survivors having fled on 
rafts to the opposite shores of the bay. Later on, when 
the panic subsided, they returned to harass the mission- 
aries, and open hostilities were only averted by flogging 
and subsequently by shooting one or two of the 
recalcitrant natives. In this discouraging fashion the 
work among the Indians commenced. Nevertheless, 
one by one they were taken into the fold, until, when 
some five years later Padre Junipero Serra came up 
from Monterey, sixty-nine natives were laboring at 
the mission and ready for confirmation. 

The spiritual training of the Indians was of a sort 
that taxed but little the intellectual powers of these 
unsophisticated people. Certain rites and ceremonies 
they soon learned to imitate, coupled with the recita- 



8 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT 

tion of a few Spanish or Latin hymns and prayers. 
The application of the lash served to increase the de- 
votion of the inattentive and a strict discipline enforced 
by rigorous punishment made all the mission Indians 
regular church goers. Food of the simplest character 
was served them, barley and maize with peas and beans 
constituting the staples. 

Some of the men toiled in the grain fields and 
learned the simple art of letting the wind winnow 
their wheat; others became expert vaqueros, riding 
after cattle, throwing the reata and rounding up the 
herd; still others were trained as boatmen and handled 
big barges on the treacherous waters of the bay. The 
women spun the wool which the men sheared, and wove 
blankets and fabrics. They sewed garments and were 
busied in making drawn-work altar cloths and doing 
other handiwork. 

Thus all were kept employed from early mass to 
vespers. With the help of the Indians, low mission 
buildings of adobe, covered over with plaster and 
roofed with tile, were constructed about the church 
to serve as workshops and dwellings. The simplest 
of clothes were provided for the people. When a girl 
was considered of a marriageable age she was allowed 
to choose one of a number of the young men and they 
were straightway mated. 

A flourishing trade in hides and tallow grew up 
between the padres and the Yankee skippers from 
around the Horn, and this, together with contributions 
from the Pious Fund made the mission prosper. In 
1825 the establishment was reputed to own seventy- 
nine thousand sheep, a thousand tame horses and twice 
as many breeding mares, as well as hogs, working 
oxen and a large store of wheat, merchandise, and some 
twenty-five thousand dollars in hard cash. Such was 
the prosperity of the mission of San Francisco at the 
time when Mexico gained her independence from 
Spain, but all this temporal power of the Franciscans 
proved but a passing phase in the working out of a 
greater destiny for the city by the Golden Gate. 



THE COMING OF THE ARGONAUTS 




ICHARD HENRY DANA, in his 
classic of California, "Two Years 
Before the Mast," gives a glimpse of 
San Francisco at the close of the year 
1835. In the course of his narrative 
he thus describes his first impression 
of the lonely port : 
"About thirty miles from the mouth of the bay,* 
and on the southeast side, is a high point upon which 
the presidio is built. Behind this is the harbor in 
which trading vessels anchor, and near it, the mission 
of San Francisco, and a newly begun settlement, mostly 
of Yankee Californians, called Yerba Buena, which 
promises well. Here, at anchor, and the only vessel, 
was a brig under Russian colors, from Asitka, in 
Russian America, which had come down to winter, 
and to take in a supply of tallow and grain, great 
quantities of which latter article are raised in the 
missions at the head of the bay." 

This was the San Francisco of 1835 — a Spanish 
presidio on the shore of what was afterwards so pro- 
phetically named the Golden Gate, a mission establish- 
ment two or three miles away where a few score 
Indians were employed, and a hamlet known as Yerba 
Buena, consisting of a handful of Yankee traders, on 
the rim of the bay! As late as 1846 the place had 
grown so little that not more than twenty or thirty 
houses of all descriptions lined the beach. Mud flats, 

*In Dana's time the coast line from Point Reyes to Ocean Beach, with 
the Farallones off shore breaking the full force of the sea, was known as 
the outer harbor or bay. It is evidently to this he refers, since from the 
mouth of the Golden Gate to the anchorage is only from five to nine miles. 



lO SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT 

laid bare at low tide, extended for some distance out 
from the shore, and the only landing-place for boats 
was at Clark's Point where rocks jutted out into the 
water. This was near the present site of Broadway 
Wharf. A bay reached up into the valley now 
traversed by Market Street, cutting across the present 
line of First Street and penetrating as far as the border 
of Montgomery. 

In order to understand the sudden transition of 
this quiet little Spanish settlement into a lawless 
frontier town of America, and from that into a great 
metropolis where the commerce of the Pacific centers, 
a brief glance at the history of the time is necessary. 
For years Mexico had been disturbed by revolutionary 
upheavals. In 1821 these culminated in the recogni- 
tion by Spain of the independence of the land from 
which for centuries she had drawn such store of 
treasure. Three years later a liberal constitution was 
adopted, making the country a republic. 

The republican government was on the whole 
unfavorable to the church, but for the first ten years 
no action hostile to the missions of California was 
taken. A comandante-general acted as governor of 
the territory, but the chief power was still lodged in 
the hands of the padres. During the year 1833, how- 
ever, the Mexican Congress enacted a law providing 
for the dispersion of the Franciscan fathers of Cal- 
ifornia, and a division of their vast principalities 
among the settlers and Indians. This so-called order 
of secularization was not put into immediate execution. 
Revolutions and rapid changes in Mexican politics 
delayed it somewhat, but the padres realized that the 
inevitable was at hand and wasted the mission property 
in a most reckless fashion. Cattle were slaughtered 
in vast numbers for their hides, the buildings were 
neglected, treasure was sent to Mexico and Spain; so 
that, when the blow fell a few years later, the missions 
were already stripped of their wealth. Soon the 
Indians scattered, the padres left the country and the 
broad fields of the California valleys fell into the hands 



THE COMING OF THE ARGONAUTS II 

of the Mexican ranchers who governed their princi- 
palities like the barons of old. These were the days 
of boundless hospitality, when a man's family was as 
large as the surrounding population, when every 
stranger was welcome at the hacienda and became a 
guest for as long as he chose to stay. Those happy 
patriarchal times on the ranches of California, how 
they vanished at the coming of the gringo, the stranger 
from across the plains! 

By the year 1840 a number of Americans had 
found their way to the remote Mexican territory of 
California. They had come as trappers and traders 
and were a hardy, adventurous set of men. That the 
suspicion and jealousy of the dons was not unfounded, 
subsequent events soon demonstrated. The Russians 
had pushed down the coast from their fur-trading posts 
in Alaska, and were narrowly watched by the Mexicans 
until, in 1841, they sold their California possessions 
to a Swiss settler. Captain John A. Sutter. Another 
element, however, was added to the population by the 
visits of the American whalers at San Francisco. 

So strained had become the relations between the 
Mexicans and the Americans that about a hundred 
English-speaking people were arrested at San Fran- 
cisco on one occasion by order of the governor. They 
were sent to Monterey as prisoners and subsequently 
many of them were carried south into Mexico where 
they remained for varying periods without trial. Such 
violent efforts to discourage immigration had little 
effect in staying the tide which had already set in. 
Fremont, the pathfinder, had crossed the plains and 
had written glowing accounts of his adventures on mesa 
and prairie. Farnham, another early comer, described 
the Mexican territory of California in enthusiastic 
terms. They told of the wonderful landscape, of the 
great Sierra forests and the herds of deer, elk and wild 
horses that made their home on the broad valleys of 
the Sacramento and San Joaquin. Societies were 
formed in the East to promote immigration to the new 
country. 



12 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT 

The American flag was first raised at Monterey 
by Commodore Jones of the sloop-of-war Cyane. 
Hearing that the United States was at war with Mexico, 
he put up the stars and stripes and proclaimed the 
territory American. A day later, becoming convinced 
of his error, he retracted and apologized to the best of 
his ability. 

When, in April, 1846, the war which had for some 
years been brewing between the United States and 
Mexico, finally reached the stage of active hostility, 
an independent war of conquest had already been 
waged in California by General John C. Fremont 
(then a colonel in the American army) in co-operation 
with Commodore Robert T. Stockton of the navy. 
Fremont had been sent with a party of army engineers 
on an exploring expedition, to map new routes from 
the East to California. In pursuit of this work he 
arrived near Monterey at a time when relations be- 
tween the Mexicans and gringos were much strained. 
General Castro, the comandante of Monterey, sus- 
pected ulterior motives, but Fremont went in person 
to explain the peaceful nature of his mission. Pro- 
ceeding on his route, he found a band of hostile Indians 
opposing him and received a report that Castro was 
planning an attack on his rear. A man of sudden 
resolution and indomitable will, he decided upon the 
hazardous plan of declaring war against California 
with his miniature army of sixty-two men. 

Following this alarming move on the part of 
Fremont came the raising of the Bear Flag at Sonoma. 
William B. Ide was made commander of the troops 
there and issued a proclamation calling upon all citi- 
zens to rally around his standard. General Castro 
planned to attack Sonoma, but Fremont, who had left 
the town feebly garrisoned, hastily returned and held 
the Mexicans at bay. On July 4, 1846, the assembly 
of Americans at Sonoma declared their independence, 
made Fremont governor, and issued a formal declara- 
tion of war. 



THE COMING OF THE ARGONAUTS 13 

It would carry us too far from the immediate 
history of San Francisco to describe the numerous 
complications which followed during the Mexican 
war, — the work of Commodore Sloat in seizing Mon- 
terey, the raising of the American flag in Portsmouth 
Square by Captain Montgomery, the military opera- 
tions in the South under Commodore Stockton and 
Colonel Fremont, when, with a forlorn-hope band, they 
marched through a hostile country and conquered it, 
the arrival of General Kearny and subsequent mis- 
understandings which led to the courtmartial of 
Fremont. By the treaty of 1848 the country became 
American territory and the last political obstacle to 
the emigration of American pioneers was removed. 

There is something pathetically tragic about the 
discovery of gold in California. For centuries, Spanish 
adventurers had been the advance guard of the world 
in finding treasure. El Dorado of song and story was 
ever before them. But in California they had seen no 
trace of the precious metal. In January of the very 
year when the land was wrested from Mexico, 1848, 
the news reached San Francisco which ere long set 
the whole world into a fever of excitement. James 
W. Marshall, an employee of Captain Sutter, the 
Swiss settler, had discovered gold in large quantities 
amid the sand of the American River, a tributary of 
the Sacramento. When the report was confirmed by 
the shipment of considerable quantities of the coveted 
dust to San Francisco, a wild scramble to the spot 
ensued. The news spread in all directions like an 
epidemic, despite the remoteness of the land. Ships 
carried it to the four corners of the Pacific. From 
Chili and Peru came dark-eyed mestizos. Whalers 
and traders brought their quota of Kanakas and 
Marquesans. It is said that the Hawaiian Islanders 
were so stirred by the news of gold in California that 
by the month of November, 1848, twenty-seven vessels 
had sailed for San Francisco, carrying some six hun- 
dred people, while four thousand persons are reported 



14 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT 

to have gone from Chili that year to work in the mines 
of the new Dorado. 

Meanwhile word reached the Eastern seaboard 
of America, and the great westward wave of migra- 
tion swept across the plains. Stillman says that never 
since the Crusades was such a movement known. 
The host, estimated at from twenty-five to forty thou- 
sand people, traveled in prairie schooners over that 
interminable stretch of plain, of desert, and moun- 
tain, braving the hardships of hunger and thirst, the 
perils of predatory Indian tribes, the dangers of the 
road wlfich beset them from start to finish. Women 
and children shared with the men the privations of 
that terrible overland trail. Some were killed by 
the Indians, some perished of sheer exhaustion, others 
were storm-bound by the high Sierra snows, and died 
by inches, resorting to cannibalism in their maddened 
desperation. 

At the same time that this multitude was cross- 
ing the plains, ships were fitted out for the long voy- 
age around Cape Horn, and old-fashioned side paddle- 
wheel steamers were put on the run to carry people 
by way of Panama. Thus from every State of the 
Union and from various parts of Europe came adven- 
turous spirits, all expecting to rock the sands of the 
Sacramento and make their fortunes. 

The city of San Francisco grew almost in a day. 
It was a city of tents and gambling houses — a raw, 
crude, lawless place with the most cosmopolitan pop- 
ulation the world has ever seen. Here if anywhere 
was a confusion of tongues that would rival Babel. 
Bayard Taylor, who came by steamer in 1849 as cor- 
respondent for a New York paper, thus describes the 
scene : 

"We scrambled up through piles of luggage, and 
among the crowd collected to witness our arrival, 
picked out two Mexicans to carry our trunks to a 
hotel. The barren side of the hill before us was cov- 
ered with tents and canvas houses, and nearly in front 



THE COMING OF THE ARGONAUTS 1 5 

a large two-story building displayed the sign Tre- 
mont Family Hotel.' 

''As yet we were only in the suburbs of the town. 
Crossing the shoulder of the hill, the view extended 
around the curve of the bay, and hundreds of tents 
and houses appeared, scattered all over the heights, 
and along the shore for more than a mile. A furious 
wind was blowing down through a gap in the hills, 
filling the street with clouds of dust. On every side 
stood buildings of all kinds, begun or half finished, 
and the greater part of them mere canvas sheds, open 
in front, and covered with all kinds of signs, in all 
languages. Great quantities of goods were piled up 
in the open air, for want of a place to store them. 
The streets were full of people hurrying to and fro, 
and of as diverse and bizarre a character as the 
houses ; Yankees of every possible variety, native Cal- 
ifornians in serapes and sombreros, Chilians, Sonori- 
ans, Kanakas from Hawaii, Chinese with long tails, 
Malays armed with their everlasting creeses, and 
others in whose embrowned and bearded visages it 
was impossible to recognize any especial nationality. 
We came at last into the plaza, now dignified by the 
name of Portsmouth Square. It lies on the slant side 
of the hill, and from a high pole in front of a long 
one-story adobe building used as the Custom House, 
the American flag was flying. On the lower side 
stood the Parker House, an ordinary frame house of 
about sixty feet front — and toward its entrance we 
directed our course." 

Bayard Taylor tells of the chaotic state of city 
streets and of all that goes to the making of a metrop- 
olis of canvas and packing boxes. He itemizes some 
of the rents during that feverish year. The Parker 
House yielded a hundred and ten thousand dollars 
annually, at least sixty thousand of which was paid 
by gamblers who held nearly all the second story. A 
canvas tent fifteen by twenty-five feet in size, called 
El Dorado, was leased to gamblers for forty thousand 



1 6 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT 

dollars a year. Provisions and wages were propor- 
tionate; extravagance, profligacy and gaming were 
the order of the day. 

The winter of 1849 was the most notable in the 
history of San Francisco. The rains were unprece- 
dentedly heavy and the miserable streets became im- 
passable bogs. Horses were hopelessly mired and 
left to die. Kegs, boxes and rubbish of all sorts were 
thrown into the worst mud-holes to form stepping 
stones for pedestrians. The tent city was of the most 
temporary and inadequate description. Men leaving 
for the mines were obliged to travel by sailboat up 
the bay and Sacramento River, a tedious journey of 
days and sometimes weeks. Municipal affairs were 
in such a state of chaos that at one time there were 
three town councils in the city. 

Out of all this hurly-burly and confusion of the 
mushroom metropolis, matters were presently reduced 
to at least a semblance of order. During nine months 
of this year, two hundred and thirty-three ships ar- 
rived from the Atlantic Coast and three hundred and 
sixteen from Pacific ports. As most of these vessels 
were deserted by their crews, who all rushed for the 
mines, the fleet of ships anchored in the harbor made 
an imposing appearance. A line of steamers was 
also put on by the Pacific Mail Steamship Company 
during this year, leaving monthly by way of Panama. 
Still, the diflSculties of crossing the isthmus by row 
boat and pack train and the dangers of fever there, 
made many people prefer the longer route around 
Cape Horn. 

During this period of excitement and disorder, 
an organization of ruffians known as the "Hounds" 
terrorized the city. They marched through the 
streets professing to be upholders of the rights of 
Americans as against the foreigners, and, with this 
pretext to shield them, attacked and looted tents, 
chiefly of the Mexicans and Chilians. Emboldened 
by success, they established headquarters, changed 



THE COMING OF THE ARGONAUTS 1 7 

their name from Hounds to Regulators, paraded the 
streets with drum, fife and banners by day, and robbed 
and murdered by night. When, in July, 1849, they 
had become so fierce and desperate as to terrorize the 
whole city, a public meeting in Portsmouth Square 
was called by the Alcalde. Those present formed 
themselves into a voluntary police force to punish the 
desperados. Many of the worst offenders were 
speedily arrested and imprisoned on a ship in the 
harbor. An impartial jury trial followed which re- 
sulted in the conviction of a number of the ring- 
leaders to imprisonment with hard labor for varying 
terms. 

To add to the terrors of this memorable year, a 
destructive fire swept the town, fanned by a high wind, 
lickmg up the flimsy houses of frame and canvas. 
It was but the first of a series of disasterous conflagra- 
tions which leveled the city during its early years. 
Painted cloth interiors furnished excellent fuel for a 
big blaze, and once started, the hand engines worked 
by a host of resolute young fellows, could make little 
stand against it. During the three years from 1849 
to 1 85 1, six fires devastated the city, involving a loss 
amounting in some cases to several millions, but with 
wonderful energy and courage the ruined citizens 
went to work each time to rebuild, improving with 
every bitter experience, until they learned to put up 
brick buildings with iron shutters on doors and win- 
dows to withstand the fearful ravage of the flames. 

That some of these fires were of incendiary origin, 
no doubt was felt. Despite the suppression of the 
Hounds, lawlessness grew apace. The rush to the 
latest gold fields had attracted numbers of fearless 
criminals from various parts of the world. Australia 
was a penal colony, and thence in particular came a 
crowd of villains ready for robbery, murder, arson 
and all desperate deeds. They frequented the water- 
front saloons about Broadway and Pacific Street — a 
quarter of the city which was known as Sydney Town 



1 8 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT 

— and this region became a veritable hotbed of crime. 
The police were too corrupt and inefficient to cope 
with the evil. Judges and juries failed in their duty, 
and although over a hundred murders had been com- 
mitted, not a criminal had been executed. 

So terrible had the demoralization of society 
become that desperate measures were necessary to 
restore order. In this period of stress and peril a band 
of citizens formed the world-famous Vigilance Com- 
mittee — an association as they themselves declared 
"for the maintenance of the peace and good order of 
society, and the preservation of the lives and prop- 
erty of the citizens of San Francisco." They had 
been organized but a short time when work was 
found for them to accomplish. John Jenkins, a mem- 
ber of the gang of Sydney Coves, as the criminals 
from Australia were termed, entered a waterfront 
store one evening and carried off a safe. Pursued, he 
took to a boat. Other boats were close upon his traces 
when he threw his plunder overboard and submitted 
to arrest. The safe was recovered, thus establishing 
the guilt of the prisoner beyond a shadow of doubt. 
He was taken to the rooms of the Vigilance Commit- 
tee on Battery Street near Pine. Almost immediately 
the town was aroused by short sharp double clangs of 
the Monumental Fire Engine Company's bell. It 
was the signal for the Vigilantes to assemble. Swiftly 
they responded. At the door only those who could 
give the pass-word were admitted. Outside waited 
the excited crowd, knowing that a dramatic moment 
in the history of the city was at hand. From ten to 
twelve o'clock they stood about, when, at the midnight 
hour, a thrill went through the assembled multitude. 
The bell of the California Engine House was tolling 
a death-knell. 

It was nearly an hour later when Mr. Brannan, 
one of the committee, came out and announced to the 
people that the prisoner had been tried and found 
guilty. Within another hour the committee, all 



THE COMING OF THE ARGONAUTS 1 9 

armed, marched silently forth from their quarters, 
guarding the prisoner in their midst. Solemnly they 
proceeded through those dark streets, followed by the 
multitude, to the Plaza. A rope was hastily tied 
about Jenkins' neck and in a trice the other end was 
tossed over a projecting timber of a low adobe house. 
The prisoner was speedily hoisted up and the rope, 
held in the grasp of willing arms, suspended him for 
some time after he ceased to move. The thousand 
spectators looked on in silence until the body was low- 
ered when they quietly dispersed to their homes. 

The effect of this dramatic episode was electrify- 
ing. Most of the sober-minded of the community 
justified the violation of the law. All but one of the 
papers sustained the Vigilance Committee. It was 
the spirit of the people asserting itself against crime, 
but in defiance of constituted authority. 

Other executions followed in rapid succession 
during 1851. A month later, another notorious crim- 
inal, James Stuart, was tried by the committee for a 
number of offenses, and after receiving the death sen- 
tence confessed his crimes and admitted the justice of 
the punishment. He too had been an Australian con- 
vict before coming to San Francisco. Two hours of 
grace were given him after the passing of judgment, 
and a minister was left alone with him. The whole 
committee, four hundred in number, kept the death 
watch in an adjoining room. Silent, resolute, they 
waited there. Not a whisper, not a murmur disturbed 
the awful calm of those two hours. Then the pris- 
oner was brought forth and, closely bound and 
guarded, was marched to the end of the Market Street 
Wharf where he was hung up to a derrick. 

Two more men were subsequently hanged together 
from beams out of the windows of the Vigilance Com- 
mittee rooms, a crowd of six thousand people witness- 
ing the execution. This, with the deportation of 
many other desperate criminals, ended the work of 
the first committee and brought a state of tolerable 



20 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT 

security to life and property out of the condition of 
anarchy which had hitherto existed. 

In 1856 the disordered state of society called a 
second time for strenuous measures and the Vigilance 
Committee was revived. Politics were at this period 
shockingly corrupt, and professional ballot box stuffers 
plied their vocation with impunity. A champion of 
the people and of order arose in the person of James 
King, the popular editor of the Bulletin. When, one 
day, the Bulletin made a statement, undoubtedly true, 
that a certain office-holder named Casey had served 
a term in Sing Sing Prison, the individual cited 
attempted to clear his reputation by a personal attack 
on the editor. He therefore shot and fatally wounded 
King, who died in a few days. Again the Vigilance 
Committee formed, larger, stronger and better organ- 
ized than before. They went to work in the same cool 
determined way to mete out justice and restore order. 
The execution, after due trial, of Casey and another 
desperate criminal, Cora, followed. Dangerous and 
disagreeable as was the work of the committee, they 
did not flinch in their attempt to supplant the law 
with a more just and effective tribunal. The specta- 
cle of an organized body of the most respected citizens, 
formed to act in defiance of law for the establishment 
of order in the community, has no parallel in history. 
They assumed full responsibility for their actions, 
their names were published with their sanction, and 
they incurred heavy personal expense and the danger 
of violent retaliation both from the desperate men 
whom they punished and the law which they defied. 

The second Vigilance Committee ended its work 
amid great enthusiasm on August the eighteenth, 1856. 
The city was crowded with sightseers from the sur- 
rounding country. Flags and bunting brightened the 
streets. So strong had the organization become that 
over five thousand armed men passed the reviewing 
stand of the Executive Committee, including infan- 
try, cavalry and artillery, all equipped for action. 



THE COMING OF THE ARGONAUTS 21 

After the parade the Vigilance Committee disbanded, 
having done its work so thoroughly that a different 
moral tone pervaded the community. 

During this period, and in fact ever since 1852, 
when the gold output of California culminated in 
eighty-five million two hundred and fifty thousand 
dollars, a period of great depression occurred in San 
Francisco. Although over seventy-four million dol- 
lars^ worth of gold were obtained in 1853 people 
became alarmed at the decline. Miners began to 
economize, trade fell off, the tide of immigration 
ceased and after a year or two even turned the other 
way. Business houses failed; Meiggs, the financier 
and promoter of North Beach, became a defaulter for 
immense sums and made his dramatic flight to Tahiti 
and South America. The whole situation in San 
Francisco looked blue enough. It was not until the 
Bonanza days of the Civil War that a revival of pros- 
perity came to the city. 

Thus toiled the Argonauts for the golden fleece 
of El Dorado, and thus out of chaos and the strenuous 
life of the frontier grew modern San Francisco. 



THE RAILROAD AND BONANZA KINGS 




FTER the decline in gold production 
in 1853, San Francisco passed through 
a period of comparative quiet and 
readjustment. In spite of the fact 
that for a number of years the annual 
gold output continued above fifty 
million dollars, public confidence in 
the boundless nature of the supply declined. Dull 
times fell upon San Francisco until the exciting days 
of the Civil War, when union or secession became a 
burning issue. The State decided with the North and 
showed its loyalty by subscribing for some time to the 
Sanitary Commission twenty-five thousand dollars a 
month, half the sum contributed by the entire coun- 
try. This from a city of a hundred and ten thousand 
people astonished the whole nation. 

During the stirring times before the war, the 
eagerness to receive news and to communicate with 
far-away friends became so great that the pony 
express was started. Hardy riders carried the mail- 
bags on fast broncos all the long and dangerous way 
from Sacramento to St. Joseph, Missouri, the western 
terminus of the railroad. The distance was covered 
in the surprisingly short interval of ten and a half days, 
making the time from San Francisco to New York 
only thirteen days. 

Still the people of California realized the neces- 
sity for closer relations with their kinsmen across the 
Rocky Mountains, and a railroad was the issue of the 
day. Congress, appreciating the strategic importance 
of a transcontinental system, listened to the demands 
of California and passed a bill for the construction 



THE RAILROAD AND BONANZA KINGS 23 

of the road. In 1863 work on what seemed an almost 
hopeless undertaking was commenced at Sacramento. 
A small company of men who had been successful in 
business enterprises in Sacramento, notably Leland 
Stanford, C. P. Huntington, Mark Hopkins, Charles 
Crocker and E. B. Crocker, secured enormous con- 
cessions from the Government both in land and money, 
for building the Central Pacific Road, while another 
company received similar grants for constructing the 
Union Pacific Road, starting at the eastern end of the 
line. The dramatic race across the continent in the 
construction of these roads, each of which was to 
have all the line it had laid up to the point of meet- 
ing, ended on the desert near the Great Salt Lake, 
where, with due ceremony, in May, 1869, Leland 
Stanford drove the last spike in the line which united 
California with the East. 

It was indeed an auspicious time for Califor- 
nia, but San Francisco was disappointed with the 
result. The directors of the road lived, during the 
first few years, at Sacramento. An effort, the second 
in the history of the city, was made by people inter- 
ested in Benicia, to make that place a rival of San 
Francisco, and to have the overland terminus there. 
Furthermore, the intention of the Central Pacific 
directors to make Goat Island their approach to San 
Francisco, connecting it by ferry with the city, was 
so hotly contested that the permission of Congress was 
withheld. Instead of the expected boom upon the 
completion of the road, San Francisco suffered a most 
disastrous panic. 

After the decline of gold in California, specula- 
tive interest in the precious metals was revived by the 
discovery in Nevada of vast deposits of silver. As 
these mines were largely owned and controlled in San 
Francisco, the market in silver stocks became a 
gambling enterprise on a vast scale. Fortunes were 
made and lost in a day and the prosperity of San 
Francisco was dependent upon the reports of the out- 



24 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT 

look in Virginia City. In 1862 the Comstock Lode 
produced six million dollars in silver. Speculation 
in the mines of this region was so great that, in the 
following year, stocks of one company sold at six 
thousand three hundred dollars a share. Of course 
a panic ensued, although the yield of the Nevada 
mines in 1864 reached sixteen million dollars. 

Ten years later all this fever of speculation was 
eclipsed by the vast yield of the Comstock Lode. 
Fabulous sums were taken from the Consolidated 
Virginia and the Gold Hill Bonanzas. In less than 
four years the Belcher and Crown Point mines had 
produced forty million dollars. Then came the Con- 
solidated Virginia, paying monthly dividends of three 
hundred thousand dollars. So wild was the excitement 
that the combined value of the Comstock shares is said 
to have increased during two months at the rate of a 
million dollars a day. 

This was the time when the bonanza kings reaped 
their harvest. The most spectacular of the fortunes 
made thus were amassed by two San Franciscans, J. C. 
Flood and W. S. O'Brien. They began investing in a 
small way as early as 1862 in the Kentuck mine, but 
it was not until some years later, when associated with 
two practical miners of Virginia City, J. W. Mackey 
and J. G. Fair, that their operations became so large 
as to attract public attention. At the time they se- 
cured possession of the Consolidated Virginia, its 
shares had a mere nominal value, since it had yielded 
no returns and showed little prospect of so doing. 
Luck was with them in the venture, and when a 
fabulously rich vein was unearthed the stock rose so 
that the four men found themselves possessed of 
princely fortunes. 

Happily for California the day is over when her 
prosperity is dependent upon lucky mining strikes. 
The mineral output of the State for 1900 was over 
thirty-two million dollars, no inconsiderable sum even 
in comparison with the great yields of the past, but 



THE RAILROAD AND BONANZA KINGS 25 

today the State relies upon such a diversity of products 
that the vicissitudes of mining cannot shake her. In 
1900 the value of the cured fruit crop was eleven 
million dollars, only four million less than the gold 
output for the same year, and this is but an index of 
the productiveness in other horticultural and pas- 
toral lines. Wheat, wool, oil, borax, beet-sugar, lumber 
and building-stone, are among the many products 
which contribute to the wealth of California. 

With this brief glance at the stirring incidents 
of the San Francisco of the past, it will be in order 
now to inspect the city and its environs as they appear 
today. A community of four hundred thousand peo- 
ple, with boundless commercial opportunities, with a 
country of rare productiveness all about it, San 
Francisco looks to the future for her history as well 
as to the past. 



THE PEERLESS BAY 




FREE sweep of water navigable for 
the largest ocean vessels over a stretch 
of well-nigh sixty miles; a land- 
locked harbor with but a single pass- 
age a mile in width leading to its 
sequestered waters ; a haven cut off by 
hills and mountains from the ocean, 
yet so accessible that the largest steamers can enter on 
all tides — such is San Francisco Bay with its four hun- 
dred and fifty square miles of water I A quarter of 
the population of California dwells on its shores. 
With a width varying from seven to twelve miles, it 
lies just within the Coast Mountain spurs that em- 
brace it, and in that most temperate of latitudes, the 
thirty-eighth parallel. Its upper reaches are subdi- 
vided into two inner bays — San Pablo and Suisun. 
The former, with a diameter of some ten miles, is 
the northern end of the great waterway, while the 
latter, connected by the narrow Carquinez Straits, lies 
to the eastward and appears like a huge reservoir into 
which the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers pour 
their flood. 

Such is the harbor which Portala first looked 
upon from the heights in 1769, and into which the 
little Spanish ship San Carlos sailed in 1775. Great 
are the changes which have taken place since then, 
but we of today are only on the threshold of the civil- 
ization destined to flourish here. This peerless bay, 
accessible, deep, safe, convenient, large enough for all 
the navies and merchant fleets of the world without 
crowding, in a climate free from winter snow and 
summer heat, surrounded by one of the most pro- 



i 



I 



THE PEERLESS BAY 27 

ductive countries known, where nature is lavish alike 
of her fruits and precious metals, — ^who dare set a 
limit upon its growth? The eyes of the world are 
upon the Pacific now, and upon the United States. 
San Francisco Bay is the great point of departure for 
America into the Pacific, and as such is destined to 
be one of the great world harbors of the years to come. 

What wonder that many explorers sailed along 
the California coast and failed to perceive the nar- 
row break in the rocks through which the Sacra- 
mento River rolls to the sea? Fifteen miles away, 
more or less, the Berkeley Hills rise from the farther 
shore of the bay, forming a background, which, viewed 
from the ocean on a misty day, appears to effectually 
close up the mile-wide gap which alone affords an 
entrance to the broad expanse of secluded water. 
Barren dreary rocks flank the shores, fog-hung and 
storm-worn, inhabited by cormorants and murres. 
To the south, guarding the entrance, is Point Lobos, 
with the Seal Rocks off shore where herds of sea 
lions bask in the sun or fish in the adjacent water. To 
the north is Point Bonita, where a lighthouse and fog 
horn warn mariners to avoid the rocks. Through 
the narrows the tide runs like a millrace. An old- 
fashioned brick fort stands close by the water at the 
inner point of the strait on the city shore. It is now 
abandoned, but upon bluffs to right and left are ter- 
raced embankments behind which lurk batteries of 
immense disappearing guns, while just inside the 
Gate in the midst of the bay is a rocky islet which has 
been converted into a citadel commanding the entire 
channel. This is the picturesque Alcatraz Island, a 
point of peculiar strategic importance in the fortifi- 
cation of the bay. 

On either side of the Golden Gate a peninsula 
juts from the mainland, with the sea to westward and 
the bay to eastward. The northern peninsula is 
occupied by Mount Tamalpais and the Bolinas Ridge, 
with villages and charming residence suburbs nestling 



28 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT 

at its base (Belvedere, Sausalito, Mill Valley and 
San Rafael) while upon the hills of the southern 
tongue of land is the city of San Francisco. Straight 
away eastward on the far shore of the bay, stretching 
along the plain and foothills of the low spurs of the 
Coast Mountains, is a group of towns and cities which 
are practically fused into one, although still retaining 
their separate names and municipal governments. 
The principal of these are Alameda, Oakland and 
Berkeley, with an aggregate population of about one 
hundred thousand. 

San Francisco Bay is an ever-changing pageant 
of gray and blue, with purple hills on its margin vary- 
ing with the season from green to brown. The same 
point of view seldom appears twice alike. Seasons, 
weather, hour, all stamp their imprint upon it and 
make it live. It is the more companionable because 
of its many surprises. You think you have followed 
it through the whole gamut of its changes, grave and 
gay, veiled and transparent, calm and tempestuous, 
when behold the next hour has transfigured the scene 
and presents an aspect before undreamed! 

Who shall undertake to describe this palpitating 
wonder of water and cloud, margined with billowy 
ranges? At best it must be but a few fleeting impress- 
ions that the pen transfixes. In summer-time when 
many rainless months succeed, the hills are sear and 
brown. The monsoon sweeps in through the Golden 
Gate and spends its refreshing salt breath upon the 
Berkeley Range, flecking the dull greenish-blue tide 
with white. Off to the south the water seems to reach 
away to a misty dreamland. Somewhere down there 
is the prosperous city of San Jose, but of this the eye 
gives no hint. Northwards there is a long rolling 
boundary line of pale purple hills. Red Rock, an 
island in the bay, stands up as a striking bit of con- 
trasting color. We can distinguish the dark bands 
Qf eucalyptus groves high up on the tawny slopes of 
the Berkeley Hills, and the settlement below dotting 



THE PEERLESS BAY 29 

the foothills for some miles. To the northwest is 
Tamalpais, rising gracefully to its 2,600 feet, a pale 
blue mountain mass with keenly chiseled profile, slant- 
ing down to the north in a fine sweep, with the hills 
of Angel Island in the foreground. In a secluded nook 
at the northern end of the bay, opposite the little town 
of Vallejo, lies the Mare Island Navy Yard, with its 
drydock, repair shops, and equipment for the naval 
base of the Pacific squadron. 

From Black Point, the military reservation just 
within the Golden Gate, the profile of San Francisco 
is built up in big terrace lines to the quaint old frame 
battlemented structure on the bold rocky summit of 
Telegraph Hill. Thence in long sinuous sags, inter- 
rupted by the square angles of houses atop the ridge, 
it runs ; streets may be seen plowing through the banks 
of buildings up the steep slopes. The turrets of the 
Mark Hopkins Institute of Art stand out conspicu- 
ously on the summit of California Street Hill, from 
which point the ridge falls off abruptly to the low- 
land of the valley followed by Market Street. The 
city's main thoroughfare may be traced from afar 
by three landmarks — the slender gray stone clock 
tower of the Ferry Building, the high domed Spreckels 
Building and the dome of the City Hall, surmounted 
by a colossal figure of Liberty. This dome is the 
third highest in the world, rising to a height of three 
hundred and thirty feet, and is a graceful point in the 
city's heart whether viewed from sea or shore. 

Beyond the valley which sunders the hills of San 
Francisco, rise the Twin Peaks to a height of over 
nine hundred feet. On extends the range south into 
San Mateo County where the mountains stretch away 
in blue misty reaches. 

The waterfront is lined with docks crowded with 
ships and steamers, the slender masts and maze of rig- 
ging foresting the shore with ropes and spars. Other 
ships and white transports from the Philippines lie 
at anchor here and there off shore, with an occasional 



30 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT 

battle-ship or cruiser to lend impressiveness to the 
scene. Comfortable fat white ferry boats with black 
smokestacks slip in and out on their journeys to and 
from the opposite shores. In midstream is Yerba 
Buena Island, now popularly known by its nickname 
of Goat Island-— a rounded land mass, treeless and 
brown on its exposed side but with groves of live-oak 
hidden away on its northern slopes. A naval training 
station is located there, fitting boys for sea duty on our 
men-of-war. 

To the eastern eye accustomed to verdure in 
summer-time, the dry hills of San Francisco Bay look 
strange enough, but the old resident loves this aspect 
of nature and would not change it had he the power. 
There is something quieting and restful about the 
sober tones which vary from brown and yellow 
through a whole range of purples, grays and blues, 
with plumbeous curtains of fog rolling in from the 
sea. The wide vistas, the dignity and gravity of the 
scene, the bigness and freedom of all, sink deep into 
the heart. There is nothing trivial or commonplace, 
nothing merely pretty about it. Its largeness and 
nobility grow upon the beholder with years of resi- 
dence. 

At times all this varied sweep of view is revealed 
in the utmost detail, with sun sparkling on the rippling 
waves, and an hour later the high summer fog 
will drift over, softening the outlines, veiling the 
hills, dimming the distant heights, and giving the 
fancy free scope to build into the obscurity what it 
pleases. A fresh sea breeze generally blows across 
the bay throughout the summer, but there are days 
when the water seems fairly oily in its serenity. 

The night views of the bay have their own charm. 
As the ferry boat leaves the waterfront, a multitude 
of bright lights sparkle at the many piers, some of 
them red and green, throwing splashes of soft waver- 
ing color in the water. The city streets up the steep 
hills are indicated by twinkling stars, and across the 



THE PEERLESS BAY 3 1 

water sparkle the lights of Berkeley on the upper 
slopes. The dark dim land masses, the blackness of 
the bay with a foggy sky above leave a solemn and 
mysterious effect of vastness and loneliness on the 
mind. 

I have dwelt on the beauty of the bay in sum- 
mer because it is so distinctively Californian; but the 
winter, too, has its own loveliness. The few showers 
of early autumn are often followed by some of the 
warmest days of the year, in October and even in 
early November. This is the season when we look 
for northers, those singular wind storms which some 
people dislike, but which I for one welcome among 
the experiences of the year. The north wind blows 
with hot dry gusts of the desert. If the rains have 
started any green blades forth, they droop and wilt 
beneath its withering fury. Every particle of mois- 
ture in the air is dried out and the atmosphere is 
crystal clear. At night the stars blaze and flash as 
if opening wide their wild eyes at the tumult of the 
wind. Each successive day for three days the weather 
grows hotter and drier and the force of the wind in- 
creases. Then the gale dies away as suddenly as it 
arose, to be followed not infrequently by a welcome 
shower. There is something immensely stimulating, 
exhilarating, even exciting about this storm beneath 
an azure sky. It is our substitute for thunderstorms 
which are almost unknown. 

When the winter rains finally set in, what a 
change comes over the landscape! Every shower 
starts forth the green blades on hill and plain. The 
southeast wind blows a gale, the dark clouds hurry 
over the leaden bay, the torrents fall, and everybody 
is happy. At the end of the storm, when the sun 
thrusts its searching rays through the cloud loops, 
striking the distant hillsides, a pale glint of green 
brightens them. Soon, how wonderfully soon, they 
are clothed in verdure from valley to crest! The 
green fairly glows and shimmers beneath the winter 



32 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT 

sun. And the atmosphere, washed of all impurities 
by the downpour, is of matchless transparency. Every 
ravine and dimple on the blue slopes of Tamalpais is 
revealed in all its lovely nakedness. Far away on the 
summit of the San Mateo Range the redwood trees 
may be seen standing up against the sky. From the 
Berkeley Hills, out through the Golden Gate the larg- 
est of the Farallone Islands is plainly visible forty 
miles away and its intermittent light flashes during 
the hours of darkness. The houses of San Francisco 
and the ships in the harbor are defined in startling 
clearness. 

The winter months about the bay are really a 
curious union of autumn with spring. Winter is 
overlooked in the rushing together of the dying and 
newborn year. Flowers are blooming, birds are sing- 
ing and a thrill of life passes over land and sea. 

At this season the bay is crowded with hosts of 
birds. Ducks and scoters swim about oflF shore. 
Murres and cormorants, grebes and loons dive and 
sport to their hearts' content. It is the gulls, however, 
that attract the greatest attention of passengers on the 
ferry boats. They follow the boats back and forth, 
picking up food thrown overboard from the cook's 
galley and darting after bread tossed them from the 
deck by interested spectators. Feeding the gulls has 
become a favorite amusement, and a pretty sight it is 
to see them poise in readiness and swoop upon the 
morsel of bread, catching it in mid air. So tame do 
they become that I have known them to take bread 
from the outstretched hand of a man. 

With this winter view of the bay, let us leave it 
to inspect more closely the great mart upon its shore. 
Hills of green and blue lie afar off. Mount Diablo, 
one of the commanding peaks of the Coast Moun- 
tains, lifts its head back of the Berkeley Range. A 
brown streak on the blue water of the bay marks the 
course of the Sacramento River, flooded by the winter 
rains. The islands are beautifully green; sJiips have 



THE PEERLESS BAY 33 

Spread their clouds of canvas to dry after the storm; 
back and forth the eye ranges over miles of varied 
scenery, all colored with a palette that only a Cali- 
fornia winter furnishes. The great ferry boat glides 
into its slip and we follow the crowd off the upper 
deck into the magnificent nave of the Ferry Building 
and down the broad stone stairway to the city street. 



VIGNETTES OF CITY STREETS 




H the bewilderment of a first view of 
a big hustling American city! To 
be dropped off the ferry into the very 
center of the maelstrom of life, where 
every mortal is bent upon his own 
task, where streams and counter- 
streams of humanity hurry in and out 
and round about, and all seem at first glance like the 
chaos of life. After the repose of the country, the wide 
serenity of the hill-encircled bay, to grapple with the 
noise and stir of the city! But what a sensation of 
exhilaration, this elbowing with the eager crowd, this 
trotting with the pack after the quarry, this pressing 
on with the tumult of men in the rush for place I 
Here life and effort are focused, and the great organic 
forces of the State are centralized and defined. The 
wheels of the Juggernaut Progress roll along the 
street and their victims are many, but the victories of 
peace atone for all the strife, and humanity goes its 
way, cursing and praying, weeping and singing, fight- 
ing and loving, but on the whole advancing from the 
beast to the angel. 

At the foot of Market Street the long low Ferry 
Building of gray Colusa stone commands the view, 
and its graceful clock-tower rises above the commo- 
tion of the city highways. To right and left stretches 
the waterfront street, where big docks and wharfs are 
lined with shipping. Heavy freight vans rattle and 
bang over the cobble-stones. Bells are clanging on 
cable cars, newsboys are piping the sensation of the 
hour; there is an undertone of many voices, a scuffling 
of hundreds of feet on the cement walks, a hurrying 



VIGNETTES OF CITY STREETS 35 

of the crowd for first place on the cars. From this 
point of vantage one might parody the well-known 
lines of Tennyson into: 

Cars to right of you, 

Cars to left of you, 

Cars in front of you clatter and rumble. 
The Market Street cable cars bear the most be- 
wilderingly diverse inscriptions. No two seem alike, 
yet all roll merrily up the same broad highway. The 
novice soon discovers that for all practical purposes 
one is as good as another unless his journey be into 
the higher residence portions of the city, and he 
furthermore learns that by a most extensive system of 
transfers he can keep traveling almost ad lib for one 
five-cent fare, journeying thus from the bay to the 
ocean. There is a great parade of cars in front of 
the Ferry Building. The red and green cable cars 
of the Washington and Jackson districts come sweep- 
ing around a loop out of a side street with clanging 
bells and a watchman preceding them. Beyond their 
stand are electric and horse cars, all off to the right of 
Market, while to the left several important south-of- 
Market electric systems start. Here are the fine big 
cars that run down the peninsula to San Mateo, as well 
as the Mission and Harrison Street lines. 

About the only distinctive feature in the laying 
out of San Francisco's streets which relieves the pre- 
vailing prosaic checkerboard system of American 
cities, is found in the direction of Market Street which 
slants boldly across the center of the town. The 
streets to the north of it were stupidly laid out on the 
points of the compass, up hill and down dale, but a 
direct route from the mission to the bay following 
down the valley, was a matter of so much import- 
ance in the early days that this highway was perpet- 
uated in the permanent scheme for the city. The 
streets of the section south of Market are parallel or 
at right angles to that thoroughfare, while the district 
to the north is laid out in streets which run on other 



36 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT 

lines, making gore blocks at every intersection with 
Market. 

Nearly everyone seems bound up Market Street, 
either a-foot or a-cable, so why not follow the crowd? 
Cars of many colors are swinging around on the 
turn-table one after another, and the man in the house 
of glass, who I trust never throws stones, is giving 
them the cue for starting up town. A big under- 
ground gong is clanging its warning as the cars swoop 
upon the turn-table; bells are jangled at the imper- 
turbable crowd, and in some mysterious way people 
manage to escape being run over. 

Jumping on the first car to start, I find an outside 
seat on the dummy. The bell rings, the gripman 
throws back his lever which clutches the cable. You 
can hear the grip work amid the rumble of the start. 
He hammers away at his foot gong and off we rolll 
There is a rush of wind down the street, a whirl and 
confusion of trafiic. Wholesale houses and office 
buildings line the way, mostly landmarks of the old 
regime with much gingerbread ornamentation, but 
here and there a fine modern building of stone or terra 
cotta shows that the city is alive and growing. There 
is time for but a glance up the streets that shoot off 
from Market at an acute angle ; California, Pine, Bush, 
are passed in a trice and the corner is reached where 
Post and Montgomery impinge upon Market. The 
fine Crocker Building is squeezed in on the gore block 
between Post and Market while across the way on 
the south side of Market a whole block is taken up 
with the Palace Hotel — a monument of bay windows. 
A sort of Bridge of Sighs crosses New Montgomery 
connecting the Palace with the Grand Hotel. On 
the northeast corner of Market and Montgomery 
Streets, a modern terra-cotta office building is occupied 
by the business departments of the Southern Pacific 
Company. Up Montgomery Street, past the Lick House 
and the Occidental Hotel, both in the architecture of 
two or three decades ago, is the magnificent Mills 




LOOKING UP MONTGOMERY STREET FROM MARKET. 



11 



VIGNETTES OF CITY STREETS 37 

Building, one of the most substantial and well pro- 
portioned structures of the city. Another massive 
edifice of fine design is the Ha)rward Building, a 
block beyond the Mills Building, but the clanging car 
is rolling up the street and there is no time to itemize 
the many modern buildings which are daily climbing 
up on steel frames from the noisy city pave. 

Another block of navigating the grip and the 
coign of observation, the navel of San Francisco is 
reached. It is the corner of Third, Kearny, and 
Geary Streets, where the busy life of the city centers. 
So many people leave the car at this point that 'tis 
evident there is something doing, and meekly enough 
I fall in line with the crowd. The three morning 
papers seek companionship upon the corners here — 
the Chronicle, whose building is of red sandstone and 
brick, with its clock tower — a well-known landmark 
of the city; the Examiner Building, in Spanish style, 
with simple plaster walls, deep recessed portico at the 
top, and tile roof; and the Call tower, rising fifteen 
stories to a fine dome, the most commanding archi- 
tectural feature of the business district. At this 
meeting of the ways is Lotta's drinking fountain, a 
token of which San Franciscans are fond from its 
association with the soubrette who, in early days, first 
made fame and fortune here by winning the hearts of 
the pioneers. 

Kearny Street is the highway for shopping, and 
hosts of fair ladies trip its stony pavements, looking 
with absorbed attention at window displays of silks 
and laces, coats and curtains, or casting glances at the 
latest walking exponent of fads and fashions. Some 
are lured by the fragrant aroma or tempting window 
exhibition into the sanctuary of ices and candies ; others 
succumb to the florist, and thus money circulates by 
the caprice of feminine fancy. 

At the Kearny Street corner, right in the shadow 
of the Chronicle Building, is a bright and attractive 
feature of the city streets — the flower sellers. They 



38 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT 

are ranged in a long row on the curb, men and boys 
standing beside their baskets and holding out bouquets 
to tempt the wayfarers. The busy stream of humanity 
sweeps by with fluttering skirts and laughing voices. 
Electric cars clang up and down, a coachman snaps 
his whip as a glistening carriage with jingling har- 
ness rolls over the asphalt pavement and the horses 
hoofs clatter merrily. It is a democratic procession 
— the negro with his pipe, the traveler with dress-suit 
case, an officer just returned from the Philippines, and 
above all, the women, over whom even Rudyard Kip- 
ling, with cynic eye and caustic pen, could not but 
indulge in rhapsodies. Mid all the din and grit of 
the city, alike in winter as in summer, the flower sellers 
are at their post, and the perfume of the violet, the 
sweet-pea and the rose, or whatever may be the flower 
of the season, steals upon the senses, while the brilliant 
array of bloom makes an oasis in the desert of stone. 

San Francisco is commonly divided into north 
and south of Market Street. In the early days of the 
city the aristocratic part of town was in Happy Val- 
ley and on Rincon Hill, to the south, but when a cit- 
izen, Mr. A. S. Hallidie, successfully solved the 
problem of climbing the steep hills north of Market 
by inventing the cable car, people flocked to the heights 
commanding a view of the bay and the Golden Gate. 
Then it was that California Street became the nob hill 
where palaces of ample dimensions were built by the 
Stanfords, Hopkins, Crockers, Floods and other mil- 
lionaires, while people of more moderate means set- 
tled upon the adjacent hills and slopes. The south 
of Market section became the home of the artisans for 
the most part, and certain cross streets, notably Third, 
Sixth and Eighth, have developed into secondary 
shopping centers. Mission Street, the first thorough- 
fare south of Market, is becoming the great wholesale 
street of the city, and numbers of splendid modern 
structures, solid, substantial, and simple in design, are 
being constructed upon it. 




FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY LANGE 



LOOKING DOWN KEARNY STREET TO MARKET. 



VIGNETTES OF CITY STREETS 39 

The residence district is today reaching out over 
the hills between the Presidio and Golden Gate Park, 
while the business section, once crowded down on the 
made land of the waterfront, is expanding up the resi- 
dence streets, especially on Geary, Post and Sutter. 
Post Street is to me one of the most attractive 
shopping highways, owing to the number of artistic 
stores which have of late years been established there. 
The idea, which originated with a picture dealer who 
commenced in a very modest way, has grown with 
surprising rapidity. Book stores, bazaars where 
Oriental brasses and rugs are displayed, collections of 
artistic photographs, Japanese embroidery and prints, 
Egyptian embroidery, jewelry, carved and antique 
furniture are among the displays noted in passing the 
shop windows. I know of no other American city, 
not excepting Boston and New York, where one may 
find the equal in taste and refinement of some of these 
stores. 

To go into a picture house where every detail of 
furniture, from the carved chairs and simple tables to 
the lockers with big brass strap hinges, are works of art, 
studiously harmonious, where wall decoration is con- 
sidered as well as the pictures selected with so much 
taste to adorn them — surely this is as inspiring as it is 
unusual! Then to be led into mysterious back rooms, 
reserved for sequestrating choice collections of oil 
paintings, displayed with more generous wall space 
than any art gallery affords, and other rooms lined 
with soft Japanese grass-cloth for showing watercol- 
ors and etchings! Verily it is enough to surprise the 
tenderfoot who thinks of San Francisco as the metrop- 
olis of the wild and woolly west, where whiskered men 
in top boots and flannel shirts carry six-shooters in 
their belts. Some people have slipped a half-century 
cog in picturing California from the other side of the 
continent. Culture and art have taken on a new lease 
of life here, and like the exuberant vegetation are 
already bearing the fruit of the Hesperides. Let us 



40 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT 

frankly confess that it is to be found only in spots, 
like oases in a desert of the commonplace, but every 
wind that blows is scattering broadcast the seeds. 

Where but in San Francisco can one find a book- 
store like an aesthetic library? Here are books in 
glass cases, books upon finely designed tables, and, 
scattered about the room, exquisite antiques in brass 
and bronze, choice vases and bits of pottery, with a 
few well chosen photographs and cards on the walls. 
Other rooms adjoin the main apartment — the old 
book room where many quaint and curious books in 
rare bindings are treasured, the children's room and 
the old furniture room with its quaint fireplace. 
Another bookseller on the same street, a man of years' 
experience and standing, has gone extensively into the 
publication of books by San Francisco authors, and 
the works which bear his imprint will compare with 
the output of the best Eastern houses in workmanship 
and style. 

Many cable cars go into the residence district on 
the heights. We may travel on the California Street 
cars through the business quarter, even more exclu- 
sively the haunt of men than Kearny Street is of 
women, and up the steep ascent past the Hopkins Art 
School, looking backward down the street to the bay 
with the Berkeley Hills and Mount Diablo beyond; 
or we may be hauled up Clay Street through China- 
town, holding on to our seats the while as best we may 
to prevent sliding down upon our neighbor, and ulti- 
mately get up into the Western Addition out on Jack- 
son Street or Pacific Avenue. There are countless 
blocks of the older residence portion of the city to be 
passed en route, built up of painted board houses out 
of which rows of bay windows bulge vacantly, orna- 
mented with diverse whimsicalities that are as mean- 
ingless as they are wearisome. But the cable car jogs 
on up the hills and down the valleys. An occasional 
dracaena flutters its ribbon leaves, or a eucalyptus 
sways its stiff hanging foliage in the fresh sea breeze. 



VIGNETTES OF CITY STREETS 4 1 

Then, as we climb, the vista to the north discloses 
the blue water of the bay with the purple flanking 
hills of Tamalpais upon the farther shore. Up steep 
cobble-stone streets ascends the car, with isolated knobs 
to the north and northeast — Russian and Telegraph 
Hills, crowned with buildings. Straight ahead, ocean- 
wards, are more hills up which a series of cars may be 
seen moving at measured intervals. 

Van Ness Avenue is crossed — a broad asphalt 
street lined with costly homes and large church 
edifices. Many of the houses are truly palatial in size 
and style, and an air of wealth pervades the thorough- 
fare. On clatters the car, rumbling over a crossing 
and starting up another steep ascent. Here stands an 
elegant mansion of rough red sandstone, with tile roof, 
there a quaint brick house with the distinctive features 
of the Renaissance in domestic architecture. Down 
the side streets on the lower hills, the city roofs crowd 
in a gray mass. 

Just off from Jackson Street is a simple little 
brick church which has been an inspiration to a grow- 
ing number of lovers of the genuine and beautiful in 
life. It matters not whether they are Swedenborgians 
as the minister of the church happens to be, or have 
other creedal affiliations. The spirit of the place, 
with all its quiet restfulness, its homelike charm, its 
naive grace, has sunk deep in the lives of a small but 
earnest group of men and women. Within, the 
stranger is impressed with a certain primitive quality 
about everything. The heavy madrono trunk raftero 
left in their natural state, the big open fireplace, the 
massive square-post, rush-bottom chairs, and the large, 
grave allegorical landscapes of seedtime and harvest, 
painted with loving care by William Keith, combine 
with the simplicity of design and the fitness of every 
detail, to make a church, which, without any straining 
after effect, is unique in beauty. The message of its 
builder has reached his mark, and here and there 
through city and town, homes have been reared in the 



42 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT 

same simple fashion — plain, straightforward, genuine 
homes, covered with unpainted shingles, or built of 
rough brick, with much natural redwood inside, in 
broad unvarnished panels. The same reserve which 
has characterized the building of these homes has 
likewise been exercised in their furnishing. A few 
antique rugs, a few good pictures or photographs of 
the masters, and many good books, with plain tables 
and chairs, constitute the furniture. To find this 
spirit, which would have been a delight to William 
Morris, so strongly rooted as to assume almost the 
aspect of a cult, is, I take it, one of the most remark- 
able features of a civilization so new as that of mod- 
ern San Francisco. 

For a bird's-eye view of the city, no point of van- 
tage is more commanding than the summit of Tele- 
graph Hill. An electric car out Kearny Street goes 
past the base of the hill, but the height must be gained 
on foot. Just where Kearny Street leads into Broad- 
way, in that tatterdemalion Latin quarter where Mex- 
ican and Italian restaurants crowd about the old jail, 
and the window of every two-penny shop has a name 
inherited from Spain or Italy, we leave the car and 
climb the steep road. Many of the side streets are 
passable only for pedestrians. Flights of steps or 
broad chicken-ladders lead to houses perched on rocky 
heights. It is a famous place for goats, which graze 
on old newspaper and shavings, looking at you the 
while with wistful expressions on their bearded 
countenances. 

Panting, we reach the summit and gaze abroad 
for the first impression. What a view is spread about 
within the wide sweep of horizon — of life with all its 
varied activities — commerce, manufactures, homes! 
It is like sitting down with a whole metropolis wrig- 
gling under the microscope! The great frame barn- 
like dilapidated castle interrupts a portion of the view 
to northward, but otherwise the whole varied pano- 
rama can be taken in by a turn of the head. To the 



VIGNETTES OF CITY STREETS 43 

east and northeast, lies the expanse of blue water 
bounded by the far-away green hills of the Contra 
Costa shore, rising gradually to the highest point in 
Grizzly Peak of the Berkeley Range. Goat Island, a 
green mound in the center of the bay, is humped up in 
front of Berkeley. To the south of it, Oakland lines 
the bay shore. 

Around northwestwardly stands the Bolinas 
Ridge, with the waters of the Golden Gate at its base. 
Fort Point protrudes on the south, with Point Bonita 
beyond it on the north shore, and still farther off, just 
a glimpse of the glistening blue ocean. So much for 
the bay view which curves around the marvelous pan- 
orama of the cityl At the wharves is a fringe of ship- 
ping. Men and horses move about the docks like 
black pygmies. The rumble of vans ascends from the 
cobble-stone pavement, and the explosive piffs of a 
gasoline engine are heard. 

But the city, oh the city, how it crowds the hills 
with a wilderness of gray walls and windows, cleft 
here and there by the lines of parallel streets which 
dare to climb the most forbidding heights! How it is 
spread out there on the slopes, with lofty tower build- 
ings rising from the plain, and a line of pale hills 
fading beyond into purple behind a veil of smoke! 
Near at hand, in front of the Greek church, with its 
green, copper-capped turret, is a little patch of grass. 
Beyond it, on Russian Hill, are some artistic homes 
with a bit of shrubbery on the adjacent hillslope. 
Clothes are hanging out to dry on flat roofs far below. 
The clang and din filters up from the plain in sub- 
dued tones, with the shrill voices of children caught 
by a veering gust of wind. What a chaos of dull 
houses, thrilling with life, each enclosing its family 
history, its triumph or tragedy, but all so immovable 
and unindividual as I look upon the mass! 



HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 




T was on the corner of Market and 
Kearny Streets in the evening and a 
great crowd was assembled, filling the 
streets in all directions for some blocks 
with a good-natured mass of human- 
ity, dressed for a holiday and standing 
about as if waiting for something to 
happen. Suddenly there was a flash and scintillation 
of lights, a suppressed wave of admiring exclama- 
tion running through the crowd, and San Fran- 
cisco was decked in a shimmering garment of in- 
candescent lights. At the meeting of the streets was 
an immense canopy of fairy lamps that dazzled one 
with its radiance. Up and down the way as far as eye 
could travel, bands of light were stretched overhead at 
frequent intervals, sparkling like stars. At the foot 
of the street rose the ferry tower, its every line brought 
out in electric beading. The great Spreckels Build- 
ing was similarly outlined with lamps, and away up 
town the dome of the City Hall flashed forth glor- 
iously in outlines of subdued fire. 

Such electric illuminations of San Francisco are 
now of frequent occurrence, for the city is becoming 
noted as a place for holding conventions, and from all 
parts of the country come Christian Endeavorers, 
Mystic Shriners, Knights of Pythias and all sorts of 
orders and associations who combine a holiday in Cal- 
ifornia with their business. They are entertained here 
with that hospitality for which the State is famed — a 
heritage somewhat diluted, but still characteristic, 
from the proud senors of the Mexican Republic be- 
fore the days of '49. 



HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 45 

So great has been the influx of visitors during the 
past year that there is scarce accommodation for all, 
but the completion of the two new hotels and the two- 
story addition to the Palace which is now contem- 
plated, will relieve the present stress. The Palace 
has been for years one of the landmarks of San Fran- 
cisco. It is big and bulging, but there is something so 
distinctive about its interior design that it stands alone 
among hotels. The great central court is open to the 
skylight with a balcony bordering it on each floor. 
In the midst is an immense palm, and the spacious 
court is paved with white marble flags. Behind a 
screen of palms and glass at the farther end, dining 
tables are spread, where one may have a meal instead 
of going to the restaurant or grillroom. In the office, 
a cosmopolitan crowd is assembled — ^wayfarers from 
ever)rwhere and nowhere — and one may find here end- 
less types of humanity to delight and interest the 
student of mankind. 

Although the Palace is the largest of the hotels, 
there are others about town quite as good. The New 
California, on Bush Street, with its pretty little the- 
atre in the center, is attractive and modern through- 
out. The Occidental on Montgomery Street, has for 
many years been the headquarters of army and navy 
people, as well as for many others who do not wear 
uniforms. A block nearer Market on the opposite 
side of the same street the Lick House reminds us of 
the eccentric pioneer who did so much good with his 
money after he died. In the residence district of the 
city there is an increasing number of refined family 
hotels which are sought by those who come not as 
curious birds of passage but as tentative residents. 

In the way of creature comforts, San Francisco 
is noted above all for its restaurants. The abundance 
of food produced in the immediate vicinity and the 
excellence of the large city markets, make it possible 
to provide meals at prices that amaze New Yorkers. 
An elaborate French dinner with a bottle of wine for 



46 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT 

from fifty to seventy-five cents is provided at a large 
number of places about town. A considerable French 
population came to San Francisco during the early 
days, and many of these people, gastronomic experts 
by nature, have found their gold mines in frogs' legs 
and rum omelettes. The old Maison Doree was for 
years the aristocratic dining place of the city, but it 
fell upon evil days and the sheriff took the keys. Of 
the resorts long familiar not only to San Franciscans 
fond of good living, but to the Bohemian globe trot- 
ters of many lands, there are such French restaurants 
as the Poodle Dog and the Pup, Marchand's and 
Maison Tortoni. Among the best known of the Ger- 
man places, where orchestras enliven the clink of steins 
and schooners, are Zinkand's, a great favorite with 
after-theatre supper-parties, and Techau Tavern, in an 
old church with pillars and recessed nooks decorated 
in green, where one may have rye bread and Frank- 
furters together with sundry other good things. Nor 
must one forget the plebian Louvre which is German 
to the core, in spite of its name. 

The Mexican restaurants of the Latin quarter at 
the base of Telegraph Hill, serve all sorts of hot con- 
coctions — peppery stews, chicken tamales, frijoles, and 
the flat corn cakes so dear to the Mexican stomach, tor- 
tillas, with Chili con carne and red peppers to warm 
up the meal. Italian restaurants stand side by side 
with the Mexican on Broadway, with their "Buon 
gusto" on the window pane to attract unwary flies 
within their webs. I have alluded elsewhere to the 
Chinese restaurants, but a Japanese tea house is more 
of a curiosity, even in cosmopolitan San Francisco. 
Up on Ellis Street is such a place, complete in all its 
appointments, set in a charming little Japanese gar- 
den. Here the Japanese are served precisely as in 
the land of the chrysanthemum and the cherry blos- 
som. There is even a Turkish restaurant in San 
Francisco where, surrounded by hangings and rugs of 
oriental richness, one may whiff the incense and sip 



HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 47 

the coffee of the Ottoman Empire. Of coffee houses, 
chop houses, and creameries, good, bad and indiffer- 
ent, there is no end. Swain's is the oldest and best 
known of the bakery restaurants, while the ladies 
caught out shopping generally drop into the Woman's 
Exchange, where all is dainty and appetizing to a 
degree. 

Since the palmy days of the Argonauts when gold 
pieces were thrown upon the stage in lieu of bouquets 
to signify the miners' appreciation of the popular dan- 
seuse or soubrette, San Francisco has been noted for its 
theatrical enthusiasm, and for the independence of 
its judgment concerning plays and players. Of late 
years the city has shared in the general American 
deterioration of the stage, but anything really good 
awakens the old response. The long lines of people 
standing for hours in the rain to gain admission to 
the galleries for a Wagner opera or an Irving play 
are sufficient index. Two new theatres are to be 
erected in the immediate future which will add greatly 
to the dramatic possibilities of the city. Cheap opera, 
both light and grand, for which we are indebted to 
the German residents, is a constant feature of the the- 
atrical world in San Francisco. 

Although the city has been for years a center for 
artists, sending forth many painters of distinction and 
better still keeping a few at home, it has no art 
gallery save the collection in the Mark Hopkins 
School of Art. Here are some admirable works, but 
the building is peculiarly ill adapted for displaying 
them. Paintings by many of the famous European 
masters are owned in San Francisco, and at occasional 
loan exhibitions are publicly displayed. 

Of local painters William Keith stands alone in 
his art as a master of landscape. Such poetry of field 
and grove, of mountain and forest, of moving clouds 
and breaking sunshine, has made his work loved more 
deeply than widely by all who know California and 
appreciate the great earth mother. Some day the 



48 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT 

East will awaken to the fact that the greatest of Amer- 
ican landscape painters has been working away on the 
Pacific shore all these years, and then he will be *'dis- 
covered." The work of Thomas Hill in portraying 
the larger scenes of California, especially of the high 
Sierra Nevada Mountains, has given him a national 
reputation. In portraiture, the tender feeling, the 
warm coloring and free handling of mother and child 
pictures has won a circle of enthusiastic admirers for 
Mary Curtis Richardson. The moonlight scenes of 
Charles Rollo Peters, the protraits of Orrin Peck, the 
Indians of Amedee Joullin, the landscapes of Brewer, 
Cadenasso, Jorgensen, Latimer and McComas and the 
decorations of Mathews and Bruce Porter are among 
the most widely known, although the list might be 
greatly extended without exhausting the number of 
really admirable painters. One of the signs of vitality 
is the large number of young men and women who are 
doing excellent work and constantly raising their own 
standard as well as that of those about them. In 
sculpture, Douglas Tilden and Robert Aitken, both 
young men, have done work of a high order of ex- 
cellence. 

The Bohemian Club has been a rendezvous for 
the artists and men of letters in San Francisco. Under 
the patronage of the owl, this club has brought together 
many congenial spirits who have sung songs, painted 
pictures, written poems and plays, composed music and 
told stories in honor of Bohemia. Their midsummer 
jinks in their own redwood grove in Sonoma County, 
where the majestic columns of the forest form the wings 
of the theatre and the mountain a back-ground, where 
the solemn grandure of a moonlight night is made 
wierd and strange with red fire and colored calciums, 
bringing out all the tracery of the wildwood in unfa- 
miliar lights and colors — all this with the music of a 
full orchestra and a spectacular pageant rendered in 
brilliant costumes, makes a scene of impressive beauty. 

Qi San Francisco's numerous clubs, the Pacific 



HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 49 

Union is perhaps the most aristocratic, its membership 
including many of the wealthiest and most influential 
men of the city. The Country Club, which owns a great 
hunting park in Marin County, is composed of mem- 
bers of the Pacific Union and there is also a Burlingame 
Country Club, made up of the elect who play golf 
and polo. In the Cosmos Club are many army and 
navy men, while the University Club, as its name 
implies, is composed of professors and alumni, and 
entertains at its comfortable home on Sutter Street 
many visiting scholars of distinction. The Olympic 
Club is chiefly devoted to athletics, having a building 
finely equipped with salt water swimming tank, gym- 
nasium, handball court, and all appliances for culti- 
vating the physical man. 

Among the other men's clubs may be mentioned 
the two select Jewish clubs, the San Francisco Verein 
and Concordia. The Union League, with headquarters 
at the Palace Hotel, is a Republican club exercising 
much influence over local and state politics. The 
Press Club is composed of leading newspaper men 
of the city who meet in good fellowship and toss off 
the grind and partisanship of the office for an occas- 
ional hour at their rooms on Ellis Street. The 
Unitarian Club has no building or rooms of its own 
but meets monthly around the festive board and listens 
to discussions by speakers of eminence and power, of 
questions of local, national, or universal interest. 
These meetings have much weight in presenting to an 
influential body of men, from many points of view, 
matters of vital importance. 

The women have their full share of clubs, most 
of which are devoted to literary, art, charitable or 
municipal work. The Laurel Hall Club is one of 
the oldest of these organizations, and still continues 
its social and literary gatherings without diminution 
of interest. Many prominent women of San Francisco 
are members of the Century Club, which has a house 
Qf its own on Sutter Street. It devotes its meetings 



50 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT 

mainly to music and lectures, varied by an occasional 
evening reception. The California Club is a large 
organization of women who undertake practical work 
in the city and state. They have already accomplished 
much good, notably in their agitation for preserving 
the giant Sequoias. The California Outdoor Art 
League, recently organized, has commenced a vigor- 
ous campaign in the city for the cause of flowers, trees 
and parks, and promises to exert a strong influence in 
beautifying the city. The Spinners and Sketch Clubs 
are composed of young women interested in literature 
and art. The Sorosis is a social and literary club. 

The ladies of the Emanuel Sisterhood devote 
themselves to helping those less fortunate than them- 
selves, and their aid is of the most genuine kind. They 
go among the poor to teach sewing, millinery and 
cooking, and other useful arts. The Columbia Park 
Boys' Club, largely supported by them, has done a 
noble work among a group of youngsters south of 
Market Street. In a charming home, fitted up simply 
but with real artistic feeling, the boys have nightly 
meetings. There is a small reading room with good 
pictures on the wall and books and magazines on 
shelves and tables. Classes in manual training, in 
drawing and clay modeling are conducted by volunteer 
workers. There is a gymnasium, a military depart- 
ment, a baseball club and other athletic features as well 
as a chorus of young boys who sing classical songs in 
a spirited manner. 

A college settlement has been established in San 
Francisco for a number of years, and now, through 
the generosity of Mrs. Phoebe A. Hearst, has neigh- 
borhood meetings in its own comfortable and artistic 
quarters. Another modest little neighborhood home is 
delightfully maintained by Miss Octavine Briggs, who, 
in the capacity of trained nurse, has brought health, 
good cheer, and refining influences to many people 
young and old. Over in the Latin Quarter at the foot 
of Russian Hill, the Rev. Fiske and his wife maintain 



HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 5 1 

an institutional church known as the People's Place 
— a center for good practical work in that region of 
saloons and poverty. 

The churches of San Francisco present few 
striking features to distinguish them from the houses 
of worship in other American cities of the same size. 
The older church buildings are for the most part com- 
monplace in architecture, but some of the more recent 
ones are massive stone structures of fine design. Among 
the city ministers, none perhaps has exercised so 
powerful an influence over the destiny of the com- 
munity as Thomas Starr King, whose eloquent preach- 
ing did much to save California to the Union during 
the stormy days before the war. His successor, Horatio 
Stebbins, was a pillar of strength and a profound moral 
force in the community. The quiet example of Joseph 
Worcester has been a quickening influence for all good 
and beautiful things. 

Probably the most striking feature of San Fran- 
cisco's places of worship is their cosmopolitan char- 
acter. The Greek Catholic is represented here as well 
as the Roman, and the towers of the synagogue rise 
with the spires of the Protestant Christians. The negro 
Baptist, Salvation Army and all are here. The Jap- 
anese Confucian and the Chinaman with his joss, 
worship in their own peculiar fashion. Christian 
Science, the newest, and Theosophy a modern echo of 
the oldest of religions, each has its following. 

The city schools differ in no material respect from 
those of other American cities of corresponding pop- 
ulation. There are a number of manual training and 
industrial schools, notably the Wilmerding, the Lick 
School of Mechanical Arts, the Polytechnic High and 
the Cogswell Schools. There are three academic high 
schools, the Lowell, Mission and Girls', each sending 
annually many graduates to the University. A feature 
of the school department is the salaried School Board, 
consisting of men who devote themselves exclusively 
to the work, and who, in connection with the Superin- 



52 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT 

tendent of Schools, conduct all the public educational 
affairs of the city. 

The museums of San Francisco are nearly all in 
an early stage of development. The largest is in 
Golden Gate Park, a gift of the Commissioners of the 
Midwinter Fair and is especially rich in archaeology. 
The California Academy of Sciences maintains a free 
museum of natural history in its building on Market 
Street and has the most complete extant herbarium and 
study collection of birds of the Pacific Coast. This 
institution also gives monthly popular lectures on 
scientific subjects which are largely attended. Its 
printed proceedings are recognized among the im- 
portant contributions to science, and have an inter- 
national reputation. As one of the residuary legatees 
of the Lick estate, the Academy has an assured income, 
although not sufficient to properly carry on all its 
activities. The University of California maintains in 
the Ferry Building a small but interesting collection 
of Alaskan ethnology, most of which was presented to 
it by the Alaska Commercial Company. The same 
building also contains the mineralogical museum of 
the State Mining Bureau, and the agricultural and 
horticultural exhibitions of the State Board of Trade 
which has for many years undertaken to make the 
resources of California more widely known. The 
Pacific Commercial Museum, recently organized, also 
has its headquarters in the Ferry Building where it 
is installing a collection of the commercial products 
of the countries of the Pacific Ocean. Its work is out- 
lined somewhat on the plans of the Philadelphia Com- 
mercial Museum, and it aims to keep the merchants 
of San Francisco in touch with trade openings and 
developments in foreign countries. 

Of local libraries but a passing word need be said. 
The large Public Library is temporarily quartered in 
the City Hall, while the Mechanics' Library, especially 
popular on account of its location near the business and 
shopping centers, has a building totally inadequate to 



HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 53 

its needs. Plans are already maturing for a new build- 
ing. The Mercantile completes the list of general 
public or semi-public libraries. The Sutro Library is 
a wonderful repository containing many priceless 
illuminated codices, incunabula and other rare old 
editions, but it is at present stored where it is inacces- 
sible to the public. The Academy of Sciences has a 
valuable working library of scientific books, its collec- 
tion of journals and proceedings of other societies being 
especially noteworthy. The employees of Wells, Fargo 
and Company have an excellent circulating library and 
the Bohemian Club has a choice and well selected 
collection of books for its members. 

The above somewhat dry review of the institutions 
of San Francisco seems essential to a proper under- 
standing of the city life of today. The present period 
of growth, the awakening of the city to new opportun- 
ities and new responsibilities, will no doubt lead to an 
enlargement of the various institutions of civic life. 
The nucleus of all good things is here and with the 
support and encouragement which is bound to follow 
the present wave of progress, there is no reason why 
libraries, museums, art galleries and all civic institu- 
tions for the advance of civilization and the betterment 
of humanity should not grow to their just proportions 
in the community. 



THE BARBARY COAST 




GROUP of sailor men stood in the 
doorway of an outfitting store, talk- 
ing in loud thick voices. "You're just 
a good-for-nothing coot," cried one 
brawny fisted sea dog to a companion 
disappearing around the corner. The 
dim lights shone feebly down the dark 
street. Arc lamps on the docks illuminated the 
i"iggi^g of the many masts along shore. On the 
window of a saloony-looking restaurant was painted 
"Sanguinetti's," and three Bohemians doing the 
Barbary Coast entered. The master of ceremo- 
nies stood behind his counter — red-faced, bullet- 
headed, bull-necked, with one eye gone and the other 
betwixt a leer and a twinkle. He was in his shirt 
sleeves with a sort of apron tucked about his ample 
form. Two darkies strummed a banjo and guitar, 
singing the while hilarious coon songs. We stepped 
noiselessly over the sawdust floor to a table at one side 
and ordered clam chowder, spaghetti, chicken with 
garlic sauce, and rum omelette, with Italian entrees 
and a bottle of water-front claret for good cheer. 

A buxom middle-aged lass of heroic build was 
so affected by the strenuous twanging of Old Black 
Joe that she got up and danced. Everybody joined in 
the songs; everybody talked to his or her neighbors, 
sans ceremony. There was an ex-policeman present 
with his best girl, the captain of a bay schooner, a 
tenderloin politician or two, and several misses who 
scarcely looked like school marms as they warbled 
coon songs and sipped maraschino. 

After dining, we dropped into "Lucchetti's" next 



THE BARBARY COAST 55 

door, where it is the custom to lead your partner 
through the mazes of the waltz when dinner is over 
and before going uptown to see the marionette show. 
One feels safer on the streets of this quarter at night 
when he elbows a good companion. No doubt there 
is no danger, but stories of sand-baggers, and of board- 
ing masters armed with hose pipe and knock-out drops 
for shanghaiing luckless wayfarers and smuggling 
them off to some deep-water ship outward bound, will 
crop up in the mind of the lonely pedestrian. 

By day, the waterfront is a scene of romantic in- 
terest. Every weatherbeaten vagabond who walks 
the street is itching to tell you stories of the ends of 
the earth. Every grimy grog shop has its quota of 
yarn spinners who like nothing better than an excuse 
to talk and tipple from morn to dewy eve. Go where 
you will along those miles of docks, an endless rim of 
shipping reminds you of the lands across the sea; and 
every wedding guest is in the clutches of some 
ancient mariner. 

Schooners with five masts all of a size, and with 
scanty upper rigging, are discharging pine from Puget 
Sound. English steel ships deep laden with coal from 
Wellington lie alongside the wharves. Yonder is a 
clumsy old square Sacramento River steamer with 
stern paddle wheel and double smokestacks. A rak- 
ish brig from the South Sea Islands crowds up along- 
side of a stumpy little green flat bottom sloop which 
plies on the bay. 

Sparrows chatter on the dusty wharf and scarcely 
budge for the heavy dray, drawn by ponderous Nor- 
man horses that shake the planks beneath them as 
they thunder along. Donkey engines rattle and clat- 
ter at unloading coal into cars on bridges leading 
across the street to the huge grimy coal store-houses. 
Teamsters pass with big lumber trucks and wagons 
loaded with sacks of grain. A group of heavy-set, 
stolid coal passers shuffles by. Idle beach combers 
and wharf rats with sooty faces lounge on lumber 
piles and stare vacantly at the scene. 



56 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT 

A vista through the shipping shows the steely 
blue water of the bay with a lavender-gray background 
of fog. There is a medley of schooners, scows, ten- 
ders and tugs along shore and a black, three-syksail 
Yankee clipper ship, the queen of them all, anchored 
out in the stream. A whirl of sawdust comes with 
the salt breeze; a tug toots as it passes, dock engines 
gasp and pant, vans rumble past, and thus commerce 
thrives on the grit of the waterfront. 

Great grim steamers lie in narrow berths loading 
or discharging — the tramp from Liverpool, a Panama 
liner, monster boats for South America, a big black 
Australian mail ship and others for China or Japan. 
White transports with buff funnels striped with red, 
white and blue, tell of the Philippines. A steamer is 
just in from Nome with returning miners, and an- 
other is billed to sail in the afternoon for the inside 
passage to Alaska. 

The most picturesque spot on the waterfront is 
Fisherman's Wharf. Here the Greek fishers moor 
their little decked boats rigged with graceful lateen 
sails. One must be up betimes to see them to advant- 
age, for the fisher folk are early birds. Their brown 
three-cornered sails may be seen dotting the bay at all 
hours, but the return of the fleet at sundown, like a 
flock of sea birds scudding on the wind to their roost, 
throws the spell of the Mediterranean over this far 
western haven. Although some years have elapsed, I 
still have vivid recollection of a conference at five in 
the morning with a captain and crew of one of these 
boats. The men were boozy and sleepy as we talked, 
in the little waterfront saloon, of our prospective trip 
to the Farallones, and they appeared so stupid that 
we had grave doubts concerning their ability to nav- 
igate a boat. We found the long double wharf 
crowded with perhaps a hundred fishing boats, pointed 
stem and stern, decked, and with their long cross 
booms on the masts making an unusual effect. A few 
bronzed fishermen in blue shirts, rubber hip boots, and 



THE BARBARY COAST 57 

bright sashes, were at work at the first peep of the 
sun, washing and hauling in a seine to dry or cleaning 
off the decks of their boats. The men proved to be 
skilled sailors despite the bad water-front whisky, 
and at the turn of the tide we sped away under a brisk 
head wind, bound out through the Golden Gate. 



A CORNER OF CATHAY 




FEW blocks up Kearny Street from 
the corner of Market is a stretch of 
green popularly known as the Plaza, 
but officially designated Portsmouth 
Square. It lies upon the hill-slope to 
the west of Kearny, between Clay and 
Washington Streets, and its benches, 
scattered about under the greenery, are the receptacle 
for as motley an assembly of weather-beaten hulks of 
humanity as one is apt to chance upon in all San 
Francisco. The spot is teeming with memories of 
the early days. Here the American flag was first 
raised by Captain Montgomery of the sloop-of-war 
Portsmouth. Here the Vigilance Committee first 
took the law into its own hands. The Parker House, 
and afterward the Jenny Lind Theatre, stood on the 
site now occupied by the Hall of Justice, a fine new 
building with a clock tower, situated on Kearny 
Street just opposite the Plaza. In the days of '49 the 
town life centered about this square, and many public 
meetings of importance were held here during those 
intensely dramatic days. 

Today Portsmouth Square is the lungs of China- 
town — the one breathing space in that strange Oriental 
city which crowds down upon the greenery of the lit- 
tle park. The graceful drinking fountain in its cen- 
ter, a memorial to Robert Louis Stevenson, reminds 
us that the genial story-teller was wont to linger here 
during some of his least happy days, and the little 
sermon upon the stone tablet is a perpetual inspira- 
tion for all outcasts of humanity who tarry before the 
quaint bronze symbol of a ship. 




AN ALLEY IN CHINATOWN. 



A CORNER OF CATHAY 59 

Oh, that strange mysterious horde in the center 
of San Francisco, which is in the heart of the city 
and yet not of it, that packed mass of busy humanity, 
living in a civilization as ancient as the pyramids! I 
look upon the silent procession of dark inscrutable 
faces with a feeling of awe. The settled content, the 
plodding self-reliance, the sense of antiquity over- 
shadows every countenance. Here is a fragment of 
one of the oldest and most conservative civilizations, 
grafted upon the newest and most radical. Certain 
innovations of up-to-date Americanism the Chinese 
have adopted. They have a telephone central station 
with native operators, and many of their buildings are 
illuminated with incandescent lamps, but these things 
are external and superficial. Two thousand years of 
arrested development is not conducive to a pliable 
mind. The Chinaman who uses the telephone, eats 
with chopsticks and goes before his joss with presents 
of food to propitiate the god and make his business 
prosper. His queue is as sacred to him as it was to 
his forefathers. He will run a sewing machine and 
drive a broken down plug hitched to a dilapidated 
laundry wagon, but when it comes to delivering vege- 
tables he swings two immense baskets from a pole 
across his shoulder, and runs mechanically along with 
a weight that would appall a white man. 

The lover of the curious and the beautiful de- 
lights in the conservatism of the Chinese. Although 
their art as expressed in the handicrafts is not so grace- 
ful and spontaneous as that of the Japanese, it has a 
medieval quality, a frankness and simplicity com- 
bined with much dexterous handling and barbaric 
splendor, that makes it a vital expression, beside which 
our machine-made articles seem cheap and common- 
place. 

The buildings of Chinatown are abandoned 
stores and dwellings of the white population, more or 
less made over by the addition of balconies and such 
other changes as the requirements or fancies of their 



6o SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT 

present owners may suggest. The restaurants and 
joss houses are particularly striking on account of 
their deep balconies, ornamented with carved wood- 
work brightly colored or gilded, and set off with im- 
mense lanterns and with big plants in china pots. 
About whatever these strange people do there is an 
elusive, indefinable touch, which is distinctively racial 
and picturesque. It may be nothing more than the 
bright splashes of long narrow strips of paper pasted 
upon buildings with inscriptions in the curious per- 
pendicular lettering of the people, but it serves at once 
to create an atmosphere. 

Along Dupont Street, a block west of Kearny, 
the bazaars center, and many of them have marvelous 
displays of beautiful bric-a-brac. Silks, embroideries, 
carved ivories, antique lanterns and bronzes, orna- 
mented lacquer ware, hammered brasses, carved teak- 
wood chairs and tables, camphor-wood chests, sandal- 
wood boxes and fans, and chinaware of exquisite work- 
manship — cloisonne, Satsuma, Canton ware, and a 
bewildering variety of other gorgeous things make up 
the stock of these places. Spectacled merchants figure 
with the aid of the abacus and keep accounts by writ- 
ing in brown paper books with pointed brushes. 

The crowd which passes along the street is prob- 
ably the most unusual to the average American of any 
within the confines of the United States. How the 
throng scuffles along in its thick-soled felted shoes, 
dark-visaged and blue cloaked 1 At first the almond- 
eyed, sallow-faced multitude looks like an undiffer- 
entiated mass of humanity, and the stranger despairs 
of finding any points in which one man varies from 
his neighbor. But as the type grows familiar the 
individual characteristics become more marked. A 
quaint little roly-poly woman passes, her black shiny 
hair brushed back over the tops of her ears and neatly 
rolled up in a knot on the back of her head, richly 
ornamented with a hammered gold clasp. Great 
pendant earrings of jade sway as she steps along on 



A CORNER OF CATHAY 6 1 

her high rocker shoes. Her loose black pantaloons 
show below the shiny black gown that comes to her 
knees or a trifle below. With her is a little boy who 
seems as if he belonged in a colored picture book of 
the days of Aladdin. His mild face looks like a full 
moon with eyes turned askew. He is clad in a gor- 
geous yellow silk jacket fastened across the breast 
with a silk loop, and his lavender pantaloons are tightly 
bound around the ankles. His queue is pieced out to 
the regulation length with braided red silk, and yet 
withal he is a picture of unconscious contentment as 
he toddles beside his mother. In the passing horde I 
distinguish an old man, bent, and wearing immense 
spectacles, his gray queue dangling sedately as he 
walks. A man picks his way through the crowd with 
a big wooden tray balanced on his head, and a little 
girl with broad flat nose and narrow eyes wears silver 
bracelets on her ankles. Yonder walks a withered 
little man with smiling face, slits of eyes, thin lips, 
sharp cheek bones and prominent ears. His head is 
covered with a stiff black skull cap surmounted by a 
red knotted ball, his slender hands are half concealed 
beneath the loose sleeves of his dark blue coat lined 
with light purple silk. His white stockings show 
above the low shoes. There are bare-footed coolies 
in straw sandals, wearing coarse clothes, and with dull 
besotted expressions on their saturnine faces, contrast- 
ing sharply with the refined features and graceful car- 
riage of the well-to-do merchants. All these and 
many more are to be seen upon the streets of San 
Francisco. 

The time to get the full effect of Chinatown is at 
night when the streets are crowded with the toilers of 
the day and the lights of many lanterns add their touch 
of color to the scene. From a sequestered balcony 
comes the strange monotonous squeaking of a Chinese 
violin. The high sing-song voices of children sound 
from a distance. On following their call I find a 
group of funny little imps about a bon-fire in the gut- 



62 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT 

ter. Their queues dangle and flop about as they play. 
They wear odd black caps and thick-soled, heavily 
embroidered slippers. Their bright jackets are fas- 
tened with cord loops and their trousers are bound 
about the ankles. A row of red Chinese candles and 
some punks are burning on the curb and these quaint 
little elves seem to be in high glee over their illumina- 
tion. 

Across the way a restaurant is resplendent with 
big colored lanterns on its balconies and the sound of 
music from within tells of a dinner party in progress. 
The restaurant is entered through the kitchen, where 
strange bright yellow cakes and other mysterious 
delicacies are being prepared. The second floor is 
reserved for the common people and here are many 
men shoveling streams of rice from bowls to their 
mouths with the aid of chop-sticks. The aristocratic 
top floor is elegantly furnished with black teak-wood 
tables and carved chairs, inlaid with mother-of-pearl. 
Decorations in the form of carved open-work screens 
adorn the partitions between rooms, and there are 
couches along the wall covered with straw mats, where, 
after eating, one can recline to smoke the pipe of 
peace. 

A Chinese dinner party is a brilliant aflFair, — the 
black circular tables loaded down with confections in 
little dishes, the gorgeous silk robes of the men about 
the festive board, and the women, even more brilliantly 
attired, who are present but may not sit at table while 
the men are dining! I choose a retired corner in an 
adjacent room and order a cup of tea with roasted 
almonds, dried lichis, preserved cumquats and ginger, 
and some curious Chinese cakes, listening the while to 
the high-pitched sing-song voices of the revelers, the 
rapping of drums, clanging of cymbals and squeaking 
of fiddles, and imagining myself a disciple of Con- 
fucius in the heart of the Flowery Kingdom. 

Returning again to the street, the bazaars are left 
behind with all their splendid art work, and plebian 




RESTAURANT BALCONY. 



A CORNER OF CATHAY 63 

food shops take their place. Pork is the meat of the 
people ; little strings of meat which for want of a better 
name I may call bunches of slender sausages, hang 
temptingly in view. Dried fish dangle on strings. 
Eggs are suspended in open wire baskets. There are 
many strange vegetables which are unfamiliar to 
Caucasian eyes — melons, tubers and fruits which belong 
exclusively to the Orient. Down in basements barbers 
are at work tonsuring patient victims. A drug-store 
dispenses dried lizards, pulverized sharks' eggs and 
sliced deer horns, together with numerous herbs for the 
curing of disease and the driving out of evil spirits. 
Dr. Lum Yook Teen of Canton, China, advertises pills 
to cure the opium habit, and, be it noted, finds it profit- 
able to have his sign printed in English as well as 
Chinese. On a corner, a Chinese fruit vender has his 
stand and offers candied cocoanut shreds, and lichi 
nuts with brown shells as soft as paper which crush 
in at a touch and reveal the sticky sweetish dried pulp 
clinging to a pit in the center. He also has plates of 
dried abalones for sale — the meat of the beautiful ear- 
shells. There are lengths of green sugar-cane which 
the Chinese boys love to suck, and many other delica- 
cies exposed to view. 

Shops are crowded together with displays of 
embroidered shoes and sandals, of long slender tobacco 
pipes, and opium pipes which look something like 
flutes, of dry-goods done up in neat little rolls and 
packages, and brass pots for the kitchen. In one 
window sits a spectacled jeweler, working away in the 
dim light at a hand-wrought ring. He has bits of 
carved jade and silver bracelets about him as evidences 
of his handiwork. 

Off from the main business street of Chinatown 
extend many side lanes and dark alleys, packed with 
sallow-visaged Celestials. There are narrow passages 
and long dark stairways that one hesitates to venture 
upon. Other alleys are brilliantly illuminated but 
have barred doors and windows with little peep-holes 



64 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT 

where lowering men with intense black eyes scan every 
one who approaches. These are the gambling dens. 
The nervous banging of doors sounds constantly as men 
pass in and out and the heavy bolts are turned to exclude 
the police. A fat dowager in a shiny black dress stands 
in the shadow of an alley and peers out with a sinister 
look on her face. At a street corner a crowd is reading 
a red bulletin pasted upon the wall. 

During one of my nocturnal rambles through 
Chinatown I was fortunate enough to witness the 
annual ceremony of feeding the poor dead. It was held 
in Sullivan Alley, so named, no doubt because it is in- 
habited exclusively by the Chinese, and Irishmen, as 
well as all other people of pale complexions, are ex- 
pressly warned off by sign and guard. A crowd of 
Celestials pushed in and out through the doorway in 
the high fence that made the alley private. Now and 
then a man would come with a covered pewter dish 
of food which he was bearing from the restaurant to 
some one within, or a waiter would pass, balancing 
a tray on his head with a whole meal in pewter 
pots. The narrow street was aglow with solid 
rows of lanterns suspended from both the lower 
and the upper balconies. At the end of the alley 
stood a gaudy booth decorated with flowers, in- 
scriptions and "banners. A band of musicians, lav- 
ishly dressed in colored silks, dispensed wild music; 
banging drums and clashing cymbals broke in upon 
the strange cadences of shrill pipes and squeaky fiddles. 
Around the corner of the alley was a great screen 
painted with three immense figures of josses, fiercely 
grotesque. Before them a table spread with rare altar 
cloths richly embroidered was loaded with confections 
and flowers. Candles and incense burned before the 
shrine. Four priests in vivid scarlet robes with gold 
embroidered squares on their backs, and elaborately 
embroidered trimmings of white and silver in front, 
their heads covered with stiff black caps surmounted 
by large gold knots, faced the tables and bowed in 
stately fashion to the tune of the strenuous music. 



A CORNER OF CATHAY 65 

Ladies dressed in gorgeous costumes with their black 
hair plastered back, leaned over balconies in the glow 
of lanterns, and watched the scene. Stolid crowds of 
men with expressionless faces packed the alley, coming 
and going in a never-ending stream. The odor of 
sandal-wood incense, the rythmic whine and clash of 
the music, the Oriental horde in the softened light of 
lanterns, made a picture which seemed more appro- 
priate to a court of Cathay in the long forgotten 
centuries than to a scene in an American metropolis of 
this late day of steam and electricity. 

So much for the street scenes! On entering those 
dark portals which lead up or down by crooked ways 
into the labyrinths of rooms, a new phase of Chinatown 
is disclosed. Here in garrets and cellars human beings 
are stowed away, stacks of bunks holding the packed 
mass of humanity. In stifling subterranean chambers 
opium fiends lie in beastial filth and dream of bliss. 

Even the theatre is honey-combed with such dark 
and devious tunnels where the actors live. The white 
visitor gropes his way to the stage through crooked 
lanes bordered by dingy closets of rooms whence floats 
the dried-apple odor of burning pellets of opium, and 
those other undefinable but eminently distinctive smells 
which only Chinatown can generate. 

Once upon the stage, attention is divided between 
the great sea of faces in the pit — silent, wrapt, dark, 
mysterious faces that grin and gaze as the action 
changes, but make no sound — and the action of the play. 
In the boxes sit the women, apart from the crowd. 
Seats are placed at the side of the stage for our accom- 
modation and the play goes unconcernedly on. The 
musicians, at the back of the stage, keep up an infernal 
bang and clatter, mingled with shrill twangings, pipings 
and squeakings in monotonous iteration. Men imper- 
sonating women step mincingly about in their high, 
awkward shoes, singing in falsetto voices, daintily 
swinging fans, and pursing up their painted lips to 
simulate the charms of the gentler sex. The emperor 



66 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT 

is almost certain to appear, sooner or later, and the 
officer who gets astride a chair or broomstick for a 
hobby-horse. After he is beheaded he stands up and 
gravely walks off and the audience looks more serious 
than ever at his exit. Stage scenery is severely simple. 
A table will serve for a mountain and a sign for a forest. 
The play continues for days and weeks, like the Arabian 
Nights tales, and since our capacity is limited for ap- 
preciating all its subtleties of wit, and the depths of its 
tempestuous tragedy, we betake ourselves from the noise 
of crashing cymbals which sound as if all the pots and 
pans of a big hotel kitchen were being hurled simultan- 
eously at the head of some luckless cur, and, after 
elbowing through the group of actors, and groping 
along dark lanes, finally emerge upon the street, well 
satisfied with a cursory view of the dramatic art of this 
wonderful people. 

The joss houses or temples of Chinatown have no 
external beauty save in the carved panels of their 
balconies. They are on the upper floors of buildings 
and are approached by long straight flights of steps. 
The interiors are characterized by a wealth of gro- 
tesque and conventional carving. The altars are 
marvels of intricate relief, generally overlaid with gold 
leaf. There are big brass bowls upon them, in which 
sticks of incense burn, and before the images of the 
josses are offerings of food and lighted lamps. Poles 
and emblems borne in processions on festive occasions 
adorn the walls, and there are various fortune-telling 
appliances about the place. If a man is to undertake 
a business venture he consults the joss. Two pieces of 
wood shaped like a mammoth split bean are much in 
vogue for reading fates. These are thrown violently 
upon the ground, and according as they fall with the 
flat or rounded side up is determined the man's fortune. 
There is also a plan for drawing straws to tell luck. 
When a man is well advised by the joss, and succeeds 
in business accordingly, he is apt to remember his spirit- 
ual counsellor with a handsome present, and thus the 



A CORNER OF CATHAY 67 

temple thrives. Thus it becomes possessed of its 
splendid embroidered altar cloths, its rare old carvings 
and furniture, and other paraphernalia which makes it 
a place of w^onder. 

A Chinese funeral is an event that forces itself 
upon the attention of every w^ayf arer. The beating of 
tom-toms, scattering of imitation paper money to the 
devil, the express-wagon full of baked hogs and other 
food, are all matters of note. And then there are the 
antiquated hacks drawn by raw-boned horses that 
eminently suit them, the professional mourners, the 
sallow-visaged friends of the deceased. The train pro- 
ceeds to the cemetery keeping up its infernal din the 
while. When the body is interred, a portion of the 
baked meats and confections are placed over it together 
with some lighted punks. The remaining viands are 
then taken back to Chinatown where the whole party 
unite in a feast in honor of the dead. At a later period 
the body is exhumed, the bones are scraped, and all that 
remains of the departed is shipped to his beloved rest- 
ing place — the Flowery Kingdom. 

Chinese New Year is celebrated a month and more 
after ours. At this time the whole district is bent on 
merrymaking and hospitality. Every door is open to 
welcome guests. There is a display of gorgeous cos- 
tuming that would rival a prize exhibition of cockatoos. 
Everybody makes presents ; nuts and sweetmeats are in 
every hand. Houses and stores are decked with 
lanterns; heavy-scented China lilies are stood about 
in pots and vases; punks burn, firecrackers pop, and 
the revel lasts for days. The procession in which a 
hundred-legged dragon a block long writhes through 
the streets accompanied by priests, soldiers and attend- 
ants in gorgeous livery, is the crowning event of the 
celebration. 

The Chinese question was for many years one of 
the live issues in California politics. So large an 
invasion of the little brown men was occasioned by 
the discovery of gold that their presence soon grew 



68 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT 

to be a menace to white labor. Thrifty, industri- 
ous, imitative, bringing nothing with them and carry- 
ing away all they made, it was soon evident that the 
tide of immigration must be checked. The watchword, 
"The Chinese must go," was a stock phrase of the 
stump politicians. After much sand-lot agitation and 
some rioting. Congress was prevailed upon to enact 
legislation prohibiting the entrance of Chinese laborers 
into the United States. Similar legislation was re- 
enacted at the last session of Congress, the time limit 
of the old law having been reached. The Chinese pop- 
ulation of San Francisco numbers a little under twenty- 
five thousand at the present time, having declined 
somewhat since the passing of the restriction laws. 

California faces a land with a population of prob- 
ably five hundred million people. We have demanded 
free access to that land for all our citizens, but we deny 
them the same right in return. To permit an unre- 
stricted immigration of these people would be to court 
disaster. They huddle together without families, 
nourished on rice and tea. The readiness with which 
they learn our arts, coupled with their mode of life, 
makes competition with them an impossibility. Their 
women are mainly slaves held for traffic. The police 
have made little headway against their gambling dens ; 
fan-tan is played openly behind barred doors ; opium 
is the curse of the race. Highbinders, professional 
murderers of rival tongs, are hired to assassinate 
enemies and generally manage to elude pursuit in the 
mazes of Chinatown. 

Despite all this, the Chinese are in many ways 
useful and perhaps essential factors in the development 
of California. In the fruit picking and packing in- 
dustry they are more reliable, more mobile and in every 
way more dependable than white labor. As market 
gardeners they have no equal. A good Chinaman is an 
ideal household servant, neat, thorough, industrious 
and far better trained than the average white woman 
servant. In the country districts he will go to places 
where women are practically unobtainable. 



A CORNER OF CATHAY 69 

The solution of the Chinese problem is to be found 
in a conservative and unimpassioned handling of the 
question on all sides. Neither the wide open door nor 
the total exclusion will ultimately prevail, in all prob- 
ability. But however the question may be decided, 
Chinatown is today a place of strange and absorbing 
interest, where much that is both curious and beautiful 
may be found, and where the oldest of the world's 
civilizations is religiously treasured in the heart of a 
big modern American city. 



PLEASURE GROUNDS BY THE SEA 




REARY sand dunes, blown about by 
the fog-laden wind fresh from the 
ocean, and barren hills that seemed to 
give no promise of fertility, lay be- 
tween San Francisco and the sea when 
in 1870 work was commenced on the 
Golden Gate Park. The seemingly 
impossible has been accomplished, and today the park is 
a great pleasure ground full of beauty and surprise at 
every turn. Broad avenues wind about through the 
miles of shrubbery and trees, with footpaths branching 
in all directions. Spirited horses and elegant carriages 
speed along the way. Crowds of people enjoy the 
outing on foot while many bicycles flash by. Exclusive 
of the Panhandle which is to be extended into the very 
heart of the city, as far as Van Ness Avenue, there are 
over a thousand acres in the park with seventeen miles 
of carriage drives winding through its beautifully 
diversified groves, lawns and gardens. 

In the midst rises Strawberry Hill, commanding 
a superb view of the surrounding country. Oceanwards 
the surf is breaking on the sandy beach and a ship looms 
out of the mist into the golden light of the setting sun. 
Northwest\vard lies Tamalpais set in masses of nearer 
hills, with the whole sweep of the Golden Gate at the 
foot of it. To the northeast, just over the cross on Lone 
Mountain, the crest of the Berkeley Hills may be dis- 
cerned. Due eastward, over the noble dome of the City 
Hall and way back of the hills on the far shore of the 
bay. Mount Diablo lifts its two great mounds above 
the mist. The slopes of Strawberry Hill are clothed 
in pine and cypress, with glimpses of ponds and lake- 



H 

o 

> 




PLEASURE GROUNDS BY THE SEA 7 1 

lets below. The stone cross in commemoration of Sir 
Francis Drake stands on an eminence near at hand 
and the park with its forests and broad winding drive- 
ways is all about. Flanking this are great smooth 
windswept piles of sand, softly ribbed and wrinkled 
here and there as the setting sun falls on its creamy 
folds. Beyond, on the hills, are the outskirts of the city, 
with masses of houses huddled in blocks and patches 
on the heights. Thrushes and white-crowned sparrows 
are happily singing in the shrubbery, to the accompani- 
ment of the ocean, breeze which sighs through the pine 
trees. 

Encircling Strawberry Hill is Stowe Lake, an 
artificial waterway with islets and bridges to diversify 
it. No spot in the park is more fascinating to me than 
the quaint Japanese garden and tea house, where dwarf 
trees and evergreen carpets cling amid the rocks bor- 
dering pools spanned by rustic bridges, where cosy 
nooks invite you to linger for the refreshing bowl of tea 
and crisp crinkly little rice cakes. 

The Park Museum, an imitation of an Egyptian 
temple, is especially rich in archaeology and ethnology, 
although it contains a museum of natural history as 
well. It has a fine collection of Indian baskets and its 
Colonial exhibit comprises much of interest and beauty. 
In the large Crocker conservatory are rare varieties of 
begonias, orchids and other frail exotics, while the 
splendid Victoria regia, the giant Guiana water-lily 
with a pale pink night-opening blossom a foot in 
diameter, spreads its broad tray-like leaf pads in the 
central pool. There is a massive stone music stand in 
the park, the gift of Claus Spreckels, where band 
concerts may be heard once a week. The children have 
merry times in their play-ground, and boys play base- 
ball on an expansive green lawn. There is an aviary 
where many bright-plumaged birds disport, a bison 
paddock and deer park. The trees and shrubs of the 
park have been brought from all over the world — from 
various parts of North and South America, Siberia, 



72 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT 

China, Japan, Australia and Africa. It is claimed 
that no other park has so great a variety of trees, the 
temperate climate of San Francisco supporting the 
plant forms of all but torrid countries. 

To the energy, taste, and enthusiasm of Mr. John 
McLaren, for many years park superintendent, is 
largely due the miracle of making the wind-swept sands 
into a garden of rare beauty. 

Beyond the park is the long line of ocean beach 
with its fine shore drive, and the Clifif House perched 
defiantly upon the rocks where the breakers thunder. 
Ofif shore but a stone's throw are the Seal Rocks where 
herds of sea lions lie about in the spray, roaring above 
the dashing surf. The Sutro Baths are situated near 
the shore here, with their immense salt-water swim- 
ming tanks surrounded by seats to accommodate over 
seven thousand people. 

I like best to leave the works of man which for 
the most part mar rather than beautify the coast, and, 
slipping off into some retreat along the rocky shore at 
the foot of Point Lobos, watch the great Pacific surf 
come riding in to spend its might against the weather- 
worn rocks at the entrance to the Golden Gate. Ships 
under full sail sweep proudly in with a fair wind. 
Gulls poise and flutter overhead. 

The cry of the surf on the rock-bound strand, stern 
and lonely, the salt spray and the driving foam, the 
clanging bell on the buoy that rides on the rim of the 
channel, the mist overhead hastening in through the 
Gate, all bear token of that great mother of us all, who 
calls men forth to alien shores, all speak the Titan 
language of Ocean, the mighty mistress whence cometh 
the strength of nations. 




-ROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY flBBITTS 



ON THE RIM OF THE GOLDEN GATE. 



THE AWAKENING OF THE CITY 




URING a good part of the decade 
immediately preceding the dawn of 
the new century, a strange lethargy 
seemed to have settled upon the city 
by the Golden Gate. To the north- 
ward, Seattle and Spokane were forg- 
ing ahead with giant strides. To the 
southward, Los Angeles had grown from a pueblo to 
a metropolis. In San Francisco, public spirit was at 
a perilously low ebb. Of local pride there was but the 
faintest glimmer. Population was at a standstill; 
houses were for rent. Merchants took what trade 
came their way but seldom reached out for more. 
Staggered by the crash of '93, the city seemed unable 
to recuperate, or made a recovery so slow that people 
shook their heads and spoke disparagingly of the place. 
What was the matter with San Francisco? Why 
did it rest supinely upon its many hills and let the world 
take its own course? The railroad was commonly 
blamed for all the evils arising from the difference and 
indifference of public opinion on local questions. The 
Octopus, as that Quixotic champion of the city's rights. 
Mayor Sutro, dubbed it, was indeed a power with 
tentacles far spread over the State, and permeating 
many branches of civic life. But there were other 
factors which retarded the growth of San Francisco, 
chief among which was the lack of public spirit among 
the citizens. 

It is a more agreeable field of speculation to note 
the forces which have been instrumental in changing 
all this — for a change has indeed come over the com- 
munity. One of the earliest symptoms of an awakened 



74 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT 

civic pride was the action of the Merchants Associa- 
tion in reforming the work of cleaning the streets of 
the business district. At about this time a ripple of 
enthusiasm was caused by the completion of the San 
Joaquin Valley Road and its absorption by the Santa 
Fe System, which insured a competing overland line 
to San Francisco. Events for arousing the city crowded 
thick and fast about the end of the century. The Klon- 
dike gold excitement stimulated trade and travel with 
the North. 

Years before Dewey's guns thundered at the gates 
of Manila, far sighted men had predicted that the 
strife for commercial supremacy was destined to shift 
ere long from the Atlantic to the Pacific, but their 
prophecies had fallen upon deaf ears. The Eastern 
States took little note of Pacific Coast events, save to 
chronicle a prize fight or a sensational murder. But 
when regiments of soldiers came pouring into San 
Francisco on their way to the Philippines, the atten- 
tion of the nation was centered here. It began to dawn 
upon men, both at home and abroad, that this was the 
port of departure not merely for the Spanish Islands 
of the Pacific but also for the Orient beyond. The 
strategic importance of San Francisco was impressed 
upon the dullest minds. Complications in China re- 
quiring the presence of American troops there, served 
but to deepen this realization. The moving of an 
army of seventy thousand men to and from these remote 
regions, the presence of fleets of transports in the har- 
bor, the stimulus of trade in new channels, all served 
to rouse the dormant city. 

Simultaneously with these stirring events came 
the reorganization of the Southern Pacific Railroad. 
As a part of the great Harriman System, a policy of 
co-operation with the people in the building up of the 
State has been vigorously pushed. It is now apparent 
on every hand that the interests of the railroad and of 
the people are one. If the arteries of commerce are 
obstructed, will not the tissues of the State wither? 



THE AWAKENING OF THE CITY 75 

Or conversely, if the body politic be not sound and 
strong, will it not inevitably impair the circulation of 
trade? To grasp this fundamental proposition of the 
organic connection between the people and the ave- 
nues of commerce, and to work to make this relation- 
ship a just and harmonious one on both sides, is the 
first essential to the prosperity of a country. Espec- 
ially is this so of a region which from its vast isola- 
tion is dependent upon commercial relations with 
remote parts of the land. The importance of this new 
spirit cannot be overestimated in an analysis of the 
factors which are now at work in rejuvenating San 
Francisco. The withered staff of Tannhauser has 
burst into leaf, and the dead past shall bury its dead. 

The new charter of San Francisco is constructed 
on the most advanced ideas of municipal government, 
and already great benefits are coming to the city from 
its operation. Since its adoption, large sums of money 
have been appropriated for extending the park sys- 
tem and for much needed additional school buildings. 
San Francisco occupies the proud position of a munic- 
ipality practically without civic debt. 

In the prosperity which has come with the new 
century, San Francisco has shared to the fullest meas- 
ure. Capital has been attracted from various parts 
of the country. The street railways were purchased 
by a Baltimore corporation and their relationship with 
the Southern Pacific Railroad terminated. New 
buildings were commenced in various parts of the city 
— great substantial steel-frame structures of stone and 
terra cotta. Whole blocks of these dignified, well 
proportioned buildings are going up on Mission Street, 
replacing shabby rookeries ; the splendid new Mutual 
Bank Building of gray stone and steep red tile roof, 
towers up with the other fine structures at the corner 
of Market and Geary Streets. Facing Union Square, 
a block away from the big modern building of the 
Spring Valley Water Company, the steel frame of the 
new Saint Francis Hotel is climbing higher and higher. 



76 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT 

and the stonework follows with wonderful celerity. 
Over on Market Street at the corner of Powell, on the 
site of the old Baldwin Hotel, and opposite the great 
stone Emporium, one of the largest and costliest build- 
ings of the city is now being erected for store and office 
purposes. 

Just in the nick of time, the magnificent new mar- 
ble postoffice is being completed up on Mission Street 
to replace the miserable structure down on Washington 
Street which for so many years has served as a make- 
shift. A magnificent hotel is to be built immediately 
by the Fair Estate on the California Street heights. 
These are but a few of the more striking business 
buildings now being pushed to completion. In 
one week, according to statistics compiled, six 
millions dollars^ worth of buildings were commenced 
in the city. A gratifying feature of the work is the sim- 
plicity of design followed in nearly every instance. 
Costly materials and the most perfect of modern work- 
manship, combined with good proportions on broad 
lines, are bound to make the new San Francisco an 
eminently satisfying city architecturally. In former 
days the fear of earthquakes, together with the cheap- 
ness of wood, made people, as a rule, construct low 
frame buildings. Now that the matter has been tested 
and the earthquakes found to be far less destructive 
than the thunder storms of the East, tall stone build- 
ings are no longer tabooed. 

All this building is not the result of a speculative 
boom but the response to a real demand for more 
accommodation. People are coming to San Fran- 
cisco from hither and yon, to settle in the community. 
New business enterprises are being started, old ones 
enlarged. Vast sums are being expended upon rail- 
road improvement of lines centering here, and im- 
mense steamships are built or building for trade with 
this port. Since the days of '49 such an impetus of 
growth has not visited San Francisco. 

That the city, and indeed all California, has 



THE AWAKENING OF THE CITY 77 

awakened to the opportunities now arising, is shown 
by the recent organization of a Promotion Committee 
composed of representatives of the various commercial 
organizations of the city and State. Strangers are 
made welcome at their comfortable headquarters on 
New Montgomery Street, and information relative to 
the resources of California is given to all who are 
interested. 

It is almost an axiom of civic life that the perma- 
nent well-being of a city depends upon the prosperity 
of its adjacent country. Never did any land have 
more to offer the home seeker than has California. 
The orange grows to perfection in valleys a hundred 
miles north of San Francisco, where it ripens by 
November, a month earlier than in any other part of 
the United States. Figs thrive over an even wider 
area than the citrus fruits, and experiments recently 
made in shipping them fresh to Chicago and New York 
have proven a success. California olive oil commands 
a high price on account of its freedom from adultera- 
tion, and ripe olives are becoming a much relished 
food. The prunes of San Jose and the raisins of Fresno 
have acquired world-wide fame, while California 
wines compete successfully at international expositions 
with their French predecessors and rivals. The im- 
proved railroad facilities have made it possible of late 
to ship early fresh vegetables, as well as all of the 
fresh fruits to the Eastern market. Indeed shipments 
to Europe of fresh California fruit are now regularly 
made. With the railroad back of the people a 
limitless market will await the horticulturist, and 
his returns will be proportionate to his labor and skill. 

Many inexperienced people have imagined that 
fruit growing in California was all attended to by 
nature. Young Englishmen have come here, lured by 
tales of prodigal fertility, and have smoked their pipes 
while their ranches went to perdition. Horticulture 
in California requires knowledge and hard work, much 
as anything does in this world that is worth doing. The 



78 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT 

best results are to be had on irrigated land, and small 
holdings are now proving more successful than the 
large ranches of the past, but patience, skill and grit 
are needed for the work. The passage by the Ameri- 
can Congress of the Newlands Act has called the at- 
tention of the whole country to the possibilities of 
development in the West through irrigation. The 
lakes and streams of the Sierra Nevada Mountains 
contain enough water to make fertile all the cultivata- 
ble valleys of the State, and it is now only a question 
of years before this will be done. The great wheat 
fields of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys, cul- 
tivated with gang plows and harvested with machines 
that do the whole process of cutting, threshing and 
sacking, are rivaled only by the vast prairies of the 
Mississippi. Another industry that is assuming large 
proportion is the manufacture of beet sugar, which is 
carried on in parts of California on an immense 
scale.* 

The old-fashioned placer mining — the washing of 
gold out of the sand of river beds with a rude wooden 
cradle — is no longer profitable as in the days of '49, 
but during the past five years over fifteen million 
dollars annually has been mined by the improved 
methods now in vogue, and there seems to be no dimin- 
ution of the supply. The great stamps of the Placer 
and Nevada County mines are thundering away at the 
ore, while dredgers scoop up the sand of river bot- 
toms and sift out the gold as it passes through. 

In manufacturing lines, San Francisco has been 
greatly hampered by the lack of coal mines within 
.convenient distance, although a firm like the Union 



*Mr. Charles F. Lummis in his brilliant serial, "The Right Hand of 
the Continent," in Out West for October, gives the following summary 
of California's production of sugar: 

"It sends out 40,000 tons of beet sugar, an increase of fortyfold in 
seventeen years. Leaving out Louisiana, California produces more sugar 
by ten per cent than all the rest of the Union combined — ^more than the 
other beet-growers, the Texas and Florida cane, the Kansas sorghum, the 
maple sweets of New England, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West 
Virginia, Ohio, Iowa, Michigan and Minnesota." 



THE AWAKENING OF THE CITY 79 

Iron Works, which can build such battleships as the 
Oregon and the Ohio, need not take second place to 
any builders in the world. Up to the present time 
coal has been king; but in this as in other matters an 
era of change is at hand, and Old King Coal seems 
destined to take a back seat. His rival to the throne 
is none other than that modern Zeus, the wielder of 
thunderbolts, which we call the electric motor. For 
many years the use of water as a motive power has been 
out of date, but the present cycle of progress brings it 
once more to the front. Over the valleys and hills of 
California march silent processions of poles carrying 
heavy wires upon large insulators. The lightning is 
being harnessed to the waterfalls of the mountains, and 
the mysterious currents generated in the far away 
heights by the singing streams which pour their cur- 
rent down the rocky slopes, are flashed in a trice to 
populous centers, there to light houses and highways, 
to speed cars over city streets, and to turn the humming 
wheels of industry. In the days to come, manufactur- 
ing supremacy shall be determined not by coal mines 
but by waterfalls. California, with its glorious 
Sierra battlement where the snows pile high all win- 
ter long, melting in never-failing streams that swiftly 
course to the valleys, is above all other lands supplied 
with this natural motive power. The mountain 
streams shall labor now for man, and sing at their 
toil. Even into the great city shall penetrate their 
power, and the smoke and grime of coal shall be re- 
placed by a mightier and cleanlier force. 

Coincident with the perfecting of insulating ap- 
pliances, making it possible to carry electric currents 
from the mountains to the sea, has come the discovery 
and development of seemingly limitless oil wells in 
various parts of California. The use of oil fuel as a 
substitute for coal is meeting with the most gratifying 
success. Railway engines burn it and cinders become 
a thing of the past. It has been tested upon a large 
passenger steamer running between San Francisco and 



8o SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT 

Tahiti, with the result that a saving of two hundred 
dollars a day is effected. Oil burning freight steamers 
are plying between San Francisco and the Hawaiian 
Islands. The terrible work of the stokers is abol- 
ished and the decks are no longer grimy with cinders. 
Within a year all the engines of the Southern Pacific 
Railway will be converted into oil burners. Dusty 
country roadways when oiled become like park boule- 
vards. And thus electricity and oil are not only replac- 
ing coal but accomplishing far more than the old fuel 
could do. To be sure the transition has but begun, and 
vast quantities of coal must still be imported to San 
Francisco, but when ere long the oil pipe line is laid 
from Bakersfield to tide water, when J. Pierpont 
Morgan's new oil company, just organized with a capi- 
talization of twenty million dollars, is in operation, and 
the new San Francisco Electric Power Company has 
brought its lines from the mountains to the city, the 
demand for coal will surely not continue to increase in 
proportion to the growth of population or of manufac- 
turing industries. 

One other great natural source of wealth Califor- 
nia possesses, namely her forests. But every true lover 
of the wildwood looks with dismay at the recklessness 
with which this treasure is being squandered. Nor is 
it by any means a sentimental motive which has actu- 
ated the protest against this ruin and waste. The future 
of California depends upon the conservation of its 
water supply. Without this the land will become a 
desert. The forests are the only power which can 
restrain the impatient torrents from despoiling the land 
— from rushing down the mountains in freshets and 
tearing away the soil of the valleys. The forest roots 
restrain the floods, the arching branches retard the 
melting snows, and the bounty of heaven becomes a 
blessing instead of a menace to the valleys. Hence the 
wisdom of a great series of national parks in the Sierra 
Nevada Mountains. The hungry saws are ripping up 
the sublime redwood forests of the coast district — 



THE AWAKENING OF THE CITY 8 1 

forests as beautiful and impressive as any in the world. 
One State park of thirty-eight hundred acres in the Big 
Basin of the Santa Cruz Mountains is already saved, 
but aside from this the entire stretch of redwood for- 
ests is at the mercy of the lumbermen. There should 
be a chain of such parks up the coast to the Oregon 
boundary, lest our children grow up to curse us for our 
sinful neglect of them. San Francisco, awakened, 
aroused, building, reaching out, must not be satisfied 
with accomplishing its own immediate ends, but must 
remember that it has children who are to inherit the 
work of its hands. 



THE EASTERN SHORE 



^ils 


E 



VERY fifteen minutes during the day- 
light hours a great ferry boat leaves 
the gray stone building at the foot of 
Market Street for the eastern shore, 
passing in transit the return boats. 
During the evening, travel is lighter 
and boats run at less frequent inter- 
vals. Six miles of boating and a like distance by train 
for five cents to daily travelers or commuters, and ten 
cents for occasional passengers, is the cost of the trip — a 
rate unparalleled in suburban traffic. The larger 
boats, comfortable and modern in every detail, are 
capable of accommodating over two thousand persons, 
in spite of which they are often taxed to their utmost 
seating capacity during the morning and evening 
hours. It is estimated that a daily average of over 
forty thousand people cross the bay, while on special 
occasions the travel has been as great as a hundred 
thousand persons in a day. 

Oakland, with its estuary for deep-water ship- 
ping, with ship yards for the building and repairing 
of vessels, and every facility for the immediate transfer 
of freight from ship to car, is peculiarly well located as 
a commercial center. Two long piers, or "moles" as 
they are called, reach out into the bay to carry South- 
ern Pacific overland and local trains as near as possi- 
ble to San Francisco, and a third pier is now nearly 
completed for the electric car service of the Santa Fe. 
Alameda County, of which Oakland is the metropolis, 
is one of the most productive districts of the State. It 
is famed for its vineyards, its hop fields and orchards. 
Indeed all fruits and vegetables thrive in its equable 



THE EASTERN SHORE 83 

climate. The project of tunneling the hills back of 
Fruitvale, thus affording easy access to the sheltered 
valleys beyond the Coast Range, is now nearing con- 
summation, and will become an important factor in 
the city's development. Already Oakland is the third 
city in the State in population, its inhabitants number- 
ing about seventy thousand. It has many charming 
residences tucked away amid semi-tropic gardens, the 
district about Lake Merritt being especially noted for 
its substantial homes. 

Alameda, with over sixteen thousand inhabitants, 
lies to the south of Oakland on the low land, which, by 
the recent cutting of the tidal canal, has been con- 
verted into an island. Its well-kept macadamized 
streets and many fine homes embowered in shrubbery 
and vines, make it a favorite residence town for an 
increasing number of people who do business in San 
Francisco. Alameda is a headquarters for the yacht- 
men and canoeists of the eastern shore, while its salt- 
water baths are an attraction to those fond of aquatic 
sports. 

One may be forgiven for an undue partiality to 
his own home town, which is my only excuse for en- 
larging on the charms of Berkeley. I know it and 
love it from many years' residence. It is an unfinished 
place with much about it that might be bettered, par- 
ticularly in the provincial architecture of its business 
section, yet I have never known anyone, however 
widely he may have traveled, in New England or in 
Old, who has once lived under the spell of the Berkeley 
oaks without wishing to make it a home for life. 

Berkeley lies upon the hills opposite the Golden 
Gate. Its homes command the whole glorious sweep 
of bay and shore. Tamalpais rears its finely chiseled 
profile to the right of the Gate, and San Francisco on 
its many hills lies to the left. The selection of this 
site for a State University was an inspiration on the 
part of its founders. Just where a beautiful canon 
in the Berkeley hills descends to the plain, with classic 



84 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT 

laurels fringing its upper slopes, and the patriarch 
live-oaks sanctifying its lower levels with their gnarled 
gray trunks and dark canopies of verdure, upon the 
gently rising slope which leads up from the bay shore 
some two miles distant, a tract of two hundred and 
eighty-five acres has been set apart for the University 
of California. The Berkeley Hills rise abruptly back 
of it to the crest of Grizzly Peak, some fifteen hundred 
feet high, and upon the three lower sides of the grounds 
extends the town. 

Wherein lies the charm of Berkeley? Is it in 
the vine-covered cottages and profusion of flowers 
which at the height of the season make the town seem 
decked for a carnival? Is it in the glorious prospect 
of rolling mountains and far-spread bay? Or is it the 
people, drawn from near and far by that great mag- 
net, the University? We old timers complain that the 
town is getting crowded and no longer has the rural 
tone of a few years ago. But what matter? Ceaselessly 
the houses go up, new ones springing into existence on 
every hand, and the only consolation is that on the 
whole the architecture is steadily becoming simpler 
and better. There is probably no other spot in Cali- 
fornia where so many really artistic homes are assem- 
bled. For those who like the sort of people attracted 
by a great institution of learning, no society could be 
more delightful than is to be found here. People are 
flocking to Berkeley not only from various parts of 
California but from many sections of the East. They 
hear of its wonderful climate, softer than San Fran- 
cisco but favorable for work all the year round, the 
most truly temperate climate imaginable. They hear 
of its homes, its people and its accessibility to the great 
city. They come to educate their children at the Uni- 
versity and once here never leave save by compulsion. 

The growth of the University of California in 
recent years is one of the most significant facts in the 
development of the State. Throngs of students crowd 
class-rooms and laboratories to the utmost limit, despite 





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ON THE CAMPUS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 



I 



THE EASTERN SHORE 85 

the many temporary buildings recently erected. The 
University has grown six fold in the past twelve years. 
Harvard alone among American universities outnum- 
bers it in undergraduates. Well may California boast 
of the fact that in proportion to population more 
students are receiving a college education within her 
confines than in any other State in the union! Plans 
are now being made for a magnificent group of per- 
manent university buildings, and the first of the series, 
the Hearst Mining Building, is in course of erection. 
Mere numbers count for little save as an index of 
the desire for higher education. It is the high stan- 
dard, the progressive spirit, the ideals of scholarship 
that are in evidence which means so much for the 
future of San Francisco and of California. It is the 
presence of such men as Benjamin Ide Wheeler, a 
Greek scholar and writer of wide reputation before 
he became so forceful a power in Berkeley as presi- 
dent of the University, of George Holmes Howison, 
one of the deepest philosophic minds of the age as the 
students of the older centers of learning attest, and of 
the memory of the illustrious dead — ^John and Joseph 
Le Conte and Edward Rowland Sill — these men and 
their co-workers are indeed the crowning glory of 
Berkeley! The college town has also for many years 
been the home of William Keith who has drawn the 
chief inspiration for his matchless pictures from the 
oaks, the hills, and the bay of this well loved region. 




SOUTH OF SAN FRANCISCO 

CCUPYING as it does the end of a 
peninsula flanked by ocean and bay, 
San Francisco has but one direction 
for expansion, but one outlet by land 
— to the southward. Here extend the 
hills and valleys of San Mateo County 
with well-kept farms and prosperous 
villages and towns. Here is Burlingame, where so 
many San Franciscans of wealth and taste have built 
country homes, adding to the charm of nature the arts 
of the architect and landscape gardener. There are 
miles of level park-like valley land here where graceful, 
wide-spreading oaks beautify the plain, revealing be- 
tween their masses of verdure vistas of blue mountain 
ranges. In the canons of these mountains, and even 
up on some of the heights where the salt breeze and 
fog drift in from the sea, are superb forests of red- 
wood. I recall with peculiar delight the stage ride 
over the mountains from Redwood City to La Honda, 
down into the deep dark glade where the solemn shafts 
of the forest rise like worshipers of the light. 

In the warm valleys of San Mateo County, shel- 
tered from the ocean wind, are the market gardens for 
supplying San Francisco with vegetables, and flower 
gardens for providing the wealth of bloom and frag- 
rance which makes the city florist shops the delight of 
all who enter or even pass their doors. The Crystal 
Springs Lakes and San Andreas reservoir in the 
mountains of this district are the sources of San Fran- 
cisco's water supply, enough, with other available 
springs, to furnish water to a million people. 

In one of the broad sheltered valleys of this beau- 
tiful country of oaks and vineyards lies the Stanford 



SOUTH OF SAN FRANCISCO 87 

University. The inspiring example of a multi- 
millionaire devoting his entire fortune to founding a 
university in memory of his only son, and the subse- 
quent devotion of his widow in carrying out in every 
detail the wishes of its founder, has made the Uni- 
versity world famous. Its beautiful Spanish archi- 
tecture, fitting so well the site, with groups of low, tile- 
roofed buildings around an inner and outer quadran- 
gle, has done much to create an atmosphere for the 
University, and its president, David Starr Jordan, has 
shaped its work on broad and noble lines. From an 
initial class of four hundred and sixty-five students, the 
attendance has grown in ten years to thirteen hundred. 
The presence of two great Universities within a radius 
of thirty miles of San Francisco, with distinctive ideals, 
with strong individual presidents, the one emphasizing 
the scientific spirit of investigation, the other the Greek 
spirit of culture, but both broad and liberal in their 
views, is one of the great influences, nay rather the 
great influence in shaping the future of San Francisco. 
The rivalry in football and athletics, in oratory and 
scholarship, between the two universities, keeps both 
on their mettle. Each helps the other, and both work 
for what is highest and best in the life of the State. 

From Stanford University and the academic town 
of Palo Alto close to it, a ride of a few miles on the 
train takes the traveler to San Jose at the head of San 
Francisco Bay. This city is fifth in population in 
California, and is noted for its park-like streets shaded 
by spreading foliage trees or ornamented with rows 
of palms, its many substantial buildings and general 
air of prosperity and thrift. It may well appear so 
with the great fruit country that surrounds it, where 
some of the finest prune orchards of the State are to 
be found, as well as acres and miles of other varied 
deciduous fruits, all cultivated to the last degree of 
perfection. 

A daily stage connects San Jose with the Lick 
Observatory on Mouni Hamilton, where, with the aid 



88 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT 

of the second most powerful telescope in the world, a 
small band of devoted astronomers have made some of 
the most important discoveries of modern times in the 
investigation of the heavens. Work of far-reaching 
importance has been done here on the finding and 
observing of double stars, on photographing nebulae, 
in spectroscopic astronomy, the detection of comets, 
and in many other fields of research. The stage ride 
of twenty-seven miles to the observatory is over a typical 
section of the Coast Mountains, the view ever enlarg- 
ing until the topmost point is reached with its almost 
unparalleled expansiveness of outlook. The whole 
snowy range of the Sierras extends far off across the 
broad plains of the Sacramento and San Joaquin. 
Mount Diablo, and Mount Tamalpais lie to the north, 
and past Loma Prieta to the southward the ranges of 
southern Monterey County are visible. San Fran- 
cisco Bay, the fertile Santa Clara Valley with its set- 
tlements, its orchards and cultivated fields, and many 
near canons and wrinkled hills are below us. What 
sunsets one may view from this vantage point, followed 
by a peep at some planet through the great glass, and 
glimpses of that illimitable star world so wonderfully 
revealed! Then there is the night stage ride down 
the mountain, bowling around curves at a lively trot, 
and descending into the darkness and solitude of the 
canons I 

I think of Mount Hamilton during the lovely 
weeks of spring-time when baby-blue-eyes gladdened 
the slopes, when shooting stars and scarlet larkspurs 
and lupines were waving in great masses of radiant 
bloom, when the birds were singing and courting, and 
the lonely mountain where man holds communion 
with the stars, thrilled with that loving touch of 
nature which makes all the world akin. 



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ABOUT MOUNT TAMALPAIS 




T was wet on Washington's Birthday 
and the wind whistled merrily over 
the Bolinas Ridge as four jolly tramps 
swung down the crest in full view of 
the miles of thundering surf from 
Point Reyes to Ocean View. They 
drew up at the door of Constantine's 
Tavern amid the spruce trees, and uttered a wild war 
whoop. Why any mortal man should have thought 
of building an inn in that remote spot on the stage 
road from Ross Valley to Bolinas, and still more why 
any other mortal men should have thought of walking 
ten miles on a rainy winter afternoon to get there, is 
one of those mysteries that passeth understanding. 
But the ceanothus bushes were abloom in the chap- 
arral, the manzanita bells were coming forth on the 
gnarly red-stemmed shrubs, hound's tongue and tril- 
lium and violet were putting forth timid petals in the 
rain and the birds were making holiday in those lovely 
wooded glades of oak and spruce. It was enough! 

Mine host Constantine, surnamed the Old Pirate, 
who had concocted stews on the ferry boat for many a 
year, was there with his good wife to receive us, and 
as soon as the wet boots and clothes were steaming by 
the big open fire we sat down to the festive board and 
devoured plates of inimitable chowder a la Constan- 
tine, savory chicken and the many other Greek dishes 
he proudly set before us, swapping yarns the while 
with our host and entertaining his festive goat while 
the master's back was turned. We slept in one of his 
cabins before a rousing fire, lulled to sleep by the rain- 
drops trickling in through his leaky ceiling. A twenty 



90 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT 

mile tramp to Olima on the morrow was one succession 
of splendid views of forests and mountains, with the 
ocean far below. 

The whole Marin County peninsula is a great 
natural park with villages and pastoral country inter- 
spersed. Would that it might be reserved as such for 
all time! In its sheltered valleys grow the noble red- 
woods, the sublimest of forest trees save only their com- 
peers of the Sierras. In the secluded Redwood 
Canon they still stand in their pristine glory — stately 
shafts of majestic proportion lifting high their ever- 
green foliage. Mill Valley shelters much charming 
second growth redwood where simple cottages nestle 
amid the trees. Most unique of these are the Japanese 
houses built by Mr. George T. Marsh. 

From this point the mountain railroad zigzags 
up Mount Tamalpais. After leaving the shade of the 
redwood and the fragrant laurel dells, it turns and 
twists up the mountain side, coiling in a double bow 
knot, curving and winding along ledges in search of 
a uniform grade. The view broadens below — first the 
bay with indentations and peninsulas, islands and dis- 
tant hills. The city comes in view across the Golden 
Gate, and presently the ocean is sighted. As the stout 
little oil engine pushes us still higher, we see the twin 
peaks of Mount Diablo looming up nobly to the east- 
ward back of the Berkeley Hills. Far to the south- 
east swells Mt. Hamilton on a high ridge, where the 
great eye of the world watches silently the other 
spheres. To the northward, fifty miles away, we see 
Mount St. Helena grimly rising. The train takes us 
to the comfortable Tamalpais Tavern from which 
point the summit is distant but a ten minutes' walk. 
The wind rushes wildly over the ridge. At our feet 
stretches the ocean, with the Farallone Islands seem- 
ingly close at hand. Turning we look down on the 
broad expanse of the bay, on hills and mountains, towns 
and cities. This varied view of land and sea, com- 
passing a hundred miles of the most diversified land- 



ABOUT MOUNT TAMALPAIS 9 1 

scape of California, must be seen many times to be 
thoroughly appreciated. Sunrise over the San Joa- 
quin Valley; the red orb dipping down into the fiery 
band on the ocean; moonlight, and the witchery of the 
fog, when the beholder sits like an eagle on his crag 
and sees the tumultuous cloud-floor spread below — all 
these are but passing phases of the splendors of nature 
which may be seen from this great watch tower of the 
Pacific. 

At foot of the mountain, nestling amid the valleys 
or in cosy nooks on the bay shore, are many charming 
suburbs of San Francisco. San Rafael is the largest 
of these and is frequented by many people of wealth as 
well as by a numerous population of moderate means. 
Sausalito, on the shore, is a meeting place for yachts- 
men, w^hile Belvedere is famed for its night water car- 
nivals. Both towns have many picturesque houses on 
hillsides overlooking the bay. A half-hour's ride on 
the ferry takes the suburbanite from San Francisco 
to his home. There he may enjoy nature, forgetting 
the cares of business and the stress and strain of the city, 
calmed by the expansive view of bay and distant hills, 
and enlarged in spirit by communion with the beauties 
far spread at his feet. 



THROUGH THE GOLDEN GATE 




AN FRANCISCO occupies the strat- 
egic post of the world commerce of 
the twentieth century. 'Westward the 
course of empire takes its way" was a 
prophecy which has already found 
fulfillment. The Pacific is the new 
theatre for the enacting of the drama 
of the nations. From time immemorial the world 
has been divided into the East and West, the former 
of hoar antiquity, conservative, profound, teem- 
ing with people, the latter ever young, ever new, fol- 
lowing in the march of time, progressive, expanding, 
peopling new wildernesses, restlessly searching for 
new worlds of hand or brain to conquer. From time 
immemorial the West has thriven upon the commerce 
of the East. Phoenecia, Athens, Alexandria, Rome, 
Venice, Spain, Holland, England, each in turn has 
waxed fat and opulent on the commerce of the Orient. 
It was in the search for the Spice Islands that America 
was discovered. It was in the determined effort to 
find a more direct route between Europe and the Indies 
that most of the future exploration of America was 
pushed. It is with the same determination to sweep 
away every obstacle, however monumental, which sep- 
arates the Occident from the Orient, that the United 
States has undertaken the prodigious task of building 
the Isthmian Canal. 

After all these centuries of effort, a great city has 
been reared upon the outposts of the western world 
with a free sweep of sea off yonder to China. The 
tidal wave of civilization has rolled around the globe. 
The West has reached its limit, and to go beyond 



THROUGH THE GOLDEN GATE 93 

means to cross the international date line into the East. 
So intent has San Francisco been upon the petty local 
problems which environed her that she is only now 
awakening from her lethargy to realize the pre- 
eminence of her position. Standing upon the rim of 
the western world, the Orient is before her. She com- 
mands the shortest route to the East, seldom blocked by 
winter storms, and commerce will always go that way. 
It is the law of following the line of least resistance. 
Even when the Isthmian Canal is finished, passengers, 
mail and all perishable freight will go by the quickest 
way, and the enforced reduction in railroad rates will 
more than offset any loss of freight business to San 
Francisco. 

The railroads are alive to their opportunities in 
overland traffic. They have so reduced the time that 
mail and passengers are now carried from ocean to 
ocean in a little less than four days. The terrors of the 
desert are set at naught by the triumphs of engineering. 
Vast sums of money are today being applied to the im- 
provement of road-beds, the straightening of curves, 
lowering of grades and modernizing of equipment on 
the transcontinental lines. Instead of the Northwest 
Passage, for which the mariners of old sought in vain, 
applied science has given us the overland passage. So 
rapid has been the increase of freight business during 
the past year that the railroads are hard put to sup- 
ply cars to handle it. The Sunset Limited train runs 
daily now instead of twice a week, to accommodate the 
increasing travel. Other railroad lines are seeking en- 
trance to San Francisco from the East. New steam- 
ship lines are bringing hither the produce of many 
shores — of Alaska and South America, Oceanica and 
Australasia, the Philippines, Japan and China. There 
were but three regular steamship lines plying between 
San Francisco and foreign ports in 1895 ^^ against 
twelve lines today, and the foreign export business has 
grown from a tonnage of something over fifteen million 
pounds in that year to over two hundred million pounds 



94 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT 

in 1 901. Our merchants are filling orders for Siberia 
and New Zealand. Korea and South Africa are being 
brought within the scope of our commercial enterprise 
as well as the various countries of Europe. 

The great triangle of the Pacific is destined to 
have its lines drawn between Hong Kong, Sydney and 
San Francisco. Of these three ports, Hong Kong will 
have China behind it, Sydney, Europe, and San Fran- 
cisco, America; and with America for a backing, San 
Francisco can challenge the world in the strife for 
commercial supremacy. In the midst of this great 
triangle lie Hawaii and the Philippines. From the 
days of Magellan's immortal voyage to the time of 
Dewey, the Spanish stronghold in the Pacific remained 
unshaken save by internal dissensions. Today America 
is roused to a new charge, and if only the love of liberty 
which has so long thrilled the nation can remain the 
dominating spirit in our disposition of these populous 
islands, we shall have a stronger hold upon the vantage 
ground on the outposts of the Orient than could ever 
be gained by force of arms. If we are bound to these 
people by ties of mutual interest, the islands will be 
to us a source of legitimate profit and a link in the 
chain of commerce with the Orient, but if we seek to 
rule them with a master hand, they will become a drain 
on our pockets and a potent factor in lowering our 
national tone. The future of San Francisco is deeply 
concerned in this matter, and the present drift of events 
seems happily in the right direction. 

While San Francisco is thus indebted to its com- 
manding position as toll taker on the world's high- 
way, the city, in common with all California, is also 
favored by isolation. Between the snowy crests of the 
Sierra Nevada Mountains and the ocean, is a strip of 
land of extraordinary fertility. Here grow the larg- 
est forest trees of the world, the largest fruits, the most 
abundant crops. Water, in some parts of this region, 
must be artificially brought to the land, but irrigation 
is at once the oldest and the newest method of assuring 



THROUGH THE GOLDEN GATE 95 

a harvest. All ancient civilizations were in countries 
which depended upon artificially watered crops, and 
California is but another instance where history is 
repeating itself. 

Beyond this garden, for hundreds of miles to the 
eastward stretches a desert, or, more properly speak- 
ing, an arid region of alkali plains and sage-brush hills 
which can probably never support a dense population. 
Thus are we of the Coast cut off from kinsmen of the 
East and Middle West. Trains may speed their fast- 
est with mail and freight. Books and magazines may 
come pouring in upon us in a deluge from New York 
and Boston, but the physical barrier remains. Cali- 
fornia, cosmopolitan though it be, thrilling with the 
same patriotic pride and enthusiasm as the East, is still 
intensely self reliant. It does not hang upon the opin- 
ions of Eastern oracles but makes its own standards. 
One has but to be inoculated with the California fever 
by a year's residence to become an enthusiastic victim 
for life. There is a largeness of horizon here un- 
known to the Easterner. City men go out on summer 
outings to climb lofty mountain peaks that would ap- 
pall a tenderfoot. The stern grandeur of the ocean 
shores and the vast horizon of Sierra peaks leave their 
impress upon the race that dwells in such an environ- 
ment. 

Much has been said and written of the climate of 
California, but it still remains a fruitful theme. With- 
in the radius of a hundred miles are to be found all 
sorts of climate, save the greatest extremes of the 
tropics and Arctics. From the cool moist coast to the 
dry heat of the interior means but the crossing of a spur 
of the Coast Range. From the frostless lowlands to 
a region of heavier snowfall than is found elsewhere 
in the United States implies but the ascent by rail of 
the Sierra Nevada Mountains. In the valleys, roses 
and oranges; in the mountains, snow-shoes and ice 
carnivals ! 

The climate of San Francisco is uniform to a de- 



96 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT 

gree that is equalled in few regions.* The summer 
fogs temper the heat and make July and August as 
comfortable as midwinter for work. The constant sea 
breeze that sweeps over the hills all summer long on 
its way to the hot interior valleys, carries away the 
germs of disease and makes San Francisco an excep- 
tionally healthful city. Frost is rare in midwinter 
and a flurry of snow falls only once in a few years, 
melting almost ere it touches the ground. From June 
to October scarce a shower moistens the ground, but 
from November to May there are copious downpours, 
interspersed with some of the loveliest days of the year. 
The rainfall varies in amount from year to year, but 
it is always welcome, since the stormiest of winter 
weather means an ensuing summer of abundant crops. 
Last winter, with a rainfall of twenty-one inches, was 
an average season. 

From my aerie amid the Berkeley Hills I look out 
through the Golden Gate and see stately ships and 
proud steamers coming and going; I can trace the long 
line of overland trains speeding along the bay shore; 
away yonder the city flecks the stubborn heights of 
San Francisco. The whole great pageant of com- 
merce is in view afar off on the blue and purple relief 
map of bay and mountains. The matchless gate of 
gold is there glowing in the sunset. Over on La 
Loma, but a stone's throw distant, stood Fremont when 
he named that "road of passage and union betsveen two 
hemispheres" the Chrysopylae or Golden Gate. 

Where could be found a more fitting highway for 
the world commerce to travel, where a more sublime 
portal whence the power and products of western civ- 
ilization should go forth to other shores of this vast 



*The lowest temperature recorded by the weather bureau during thirty 
years' observation, is 29° Far. The highest is 100°. The lowest mean 
temperature for any month during this period was 46* and the highest 65*'. 
The mean temperature during these thirty years was lowest in December, 
when it averaged 50°, and highest in September coming to 63". In other 
words, the variation of mean temperature from month to month during 
thirty years has been only 13". 



THROUGH THE GOLDEN GATE 97 

Pacific, and the stored wealth, art and industries of the 
Orient be returned to enrich America? San Francisco, 
founded by the Spanish padres who bore the cross to 
the scattered Indian tribes of the wilderness, invaded 
by a cosmopolitan horde from the four winds of the 
globe, flocking at the cry of gold, developed by Amer- 
ican energy into the most important city of the Pacific 
shore, has now taken a new impetus of growth and 
has before it a more brilliant future than the most 
sanguine of its founders dared anticipate. May that 
largeness of public spirit, that breadth of view and 
that readiness to co-operate in all that is good, grow 
and develop until the community is able to fitly cope 
with this empire of the Pacific sea and shores and 
make it tribute to its genius! 



Printed by The Stanley-Taylor Company. San Francisco. 



